There was just enough frost here last night to partially kill off the pumpkin vine, so today is officially pumpkin harvesting day. There are a couple of little fruits that were put out late that are still nowhere near ripe, hopefully there is enough life left in the vine to ripen those off before it dies off completely, but even if not it has been very productive.

Edit: ::: spoiler The harvest is in! :::

Chrysanthemums full tilt:

It’s fresh outside. 2 degrees tonight 🥶

cats need to stop making me do emergency vet runs plz.

Sammy had an hour long vomiting jag, hunched and avoidant. So of course after the billable consult while they’re taking his blood pressure he lets off a massive fart and is fine.

Restorative potion for any who may need for various reasons 😺

Got up. Checked temp. Back to bed with a book. Today will be cooking and resting

Hi.

My name isn’t Simon, and I’m addicted to scrabble on my ipad.

It started off with a Disney version, and now I’m onto the official one.

Sauce of the stove for tonight’s lasagne is making the house smell AMAAAAAZING.

migraine day 2. The cat is guarding me.

Edit: The people next door are looking after their kids piece of shit yappy cunt dogs. I lost it before and yelled at them to shut the fuck up. Thankfully they took the pieces of shit indoors.

Opened what I thought was a sealed container and got a face full of pantry moths (EWWWW) so it appears my quick clean up the other day was not enough. So cooking morning became all out pantry war morning. Oh well, everything old that was not sealed (and passed inspection) kept, new stuff had already been frozen overnight, everything else chucked. Wipe down and dosed up the cedar balls with more oil and hung back up. Ugh. I buy a lot of stuff in bulk which is more convenient and cheaper but I had been getting lazy with the freezing and sealing.

Quick break then back to it. I shall have a belly and freezer full of lamb tagine by the end of the day.

Laundry nearly done - one more load to go. I put a pork hock in the slow cooker last night and now it’s been strained, the meat separated and the stock is chilling for fat removal. Peas are soaking - Pea & Ham soup coming up! Short shopping trip later then chill for the rest of the day.

I added some craft into my plans for the day - working out how to cut down the oversupply of coles bags into little gift bags I can use for my excess produce. It took a bit of fiddling but I have now worked out a fairly simple way of cutting them down and folding them. No tape or glue required. I’m rather impressed with myself and am trying to decide if I have the skills and energy required to do a tutorial I can put online, because I think they are rather nifty.

I’ve had a good day in the garden. Harvested the pumpkins, cut back the very exhuberant saltbush, planted the brassica seedlings and done a bit of general tidying up. It’s amazing to think that just one year ago this garden didn’t even exist.

It’s looking like a lovely day today (after a very cold start) and I’m looking forward to getting out in the garden. I’ve got a couple of punnets of brassicas to plant, weeds to pull and some mulch to put down. I also want to do a bit more work on establishing the edging of the beds and mow the grass. But tomorrow looks like it will be lovely too, so I can take my time and finish anything I don’t get to tomorrow.

I think autumn is my favourite season, it has some lovely weather that is not too hot or too cold, without as much wind and bluster as you get in Spring. Plus you are winding down in the vegie garden and tidying up after the summer harvest season, so it doesn’t have the sense of an overwhelming amount of work building up to be done like Spring does.

Can’t believe how lost I got last night. Ended up using the stars for bearings to get home which brought back memories lol.

Stars are still useful for navigation when you have a useless cheapo phone.