Thoughts from Starlight Cascade

Fall arrived this past sunday (2013 September 22) at 16:44 give or take. It’s been very cool at night for the last little while, with 2 or 3 instances of frost now since September 16th. The amount of evening light is also getting less and less, and there is an inclination to delay or even skip dinner in an effort to Get Things Done.

Luckily we are approaching a slower time, mainly because we have Got Things Done and are getting closer to Got Most Things Done.

The garlic has come out of the drying leanto and Kim processed it over two days and it is now sitting in the cold room (newly moved from one end of the garage to another end).

The garage was reorganized and just Monday was it prepared for winter (ie so the vehicle could actually drive inside for the night). Parts of it still appear stacked up but those are low priority tasks to clean up in small bits of time found here and there.

There are a pile of batteries that need testing, charging and testing again before we decide to toss them.

There has been a couple of loads E-Waste heading into the Canadian Tire ewaste bins, and a lot of clothing hitting the Diabetes Society used clothes bins as well.

The electric baseboard heat hasn’t been turned on yet but soon that will be needed as well, along with the woodstove being fired up for the first time in the season… soon. The chimney was swept a couple of weeks back, not looking too bad. The wood we are getting is pretty dry and doesn’t cause a lot of creosote buildup.

Water hoses (there seem to be a lot of them!) have been drained and stored away for the winter. Soon the outside furniture will also go in along with a lot of garden decoration.

There are still a few big jobs left on the Things To Get Done including cutting down the grass and weeds in the fallow vegetable bed, mixing in a lot of composted manure, tilling it up well, and planting the garlic in a couple of weeks. We normally aim for mid-late October to allow the garlic to get started before freezeup and then get an early start in the spring. This year we will be building a planting template (called a “dibble”?) to give the bulbs more space than this years experiment of “dense-planting”, which left the bulbs not enough growing room. I think we are looking at 6″ between planted cloves in a row with 5 or 6 in a row, then at least 6″ between rows.

The deer fence (Lee valley 7’x100′ x two or three) is showing its age and I suspect the entire thing will have to come down in the spring and replaced. Climbing vines/weeds seem to be the worst as they climb and put stress on the fence, then a high wind comes along and the fence rips.

The whole point of this post is to convince myself that, yes indeed, there will be less time spent on chores and a little more time to rest and recover.