First frost, cheap seeds, squash dinner

I want to remember that we had our first hard frost last night.   The grass was all silver and sparkly when we woke up and the windshields were frosted over on the cars.  The kids were scheduled to go visit my in-laws for the morning so I took this time to dig the canna and dahlia tubers from the garden for storage.  I didn't go crazy like I did last year, I only dug up maybe 1/20th of the cannas in the garden. Picked the tallest and nicest, dug them and they're curing and waiting to be stored in the basement for the winter.

That's enough.  I'm not trying to repopulate the whole county with cannas, just next year's garden.

The garden is a disaster.  It is so bad that there is a tree growing in it, about 5 foot high, that I did not plant.  Nature did, and it was only noticed a month ago.   The whole thing is a mess that will require a weed wacker.  Something needs to change next season. This massive garden made sense when I had a farmer's market booth but at this point in my life I cannot keep up with it.

  I thought to move the geese into it since it is fenced, thinking that they could help clear it and get some free feed but they were absolutely uncooperative.  I did find these nice surprises: some more birdhouse gourds (the only things resistant to the squash bugs apparently), some tiny fingerling potatoes and a mess of beans that had gotten old.  

My oldest and I sat on the porch today in the sun and shelled the beans for fun. The gourds I'll cure and this winter we'll decorate them and turn them into birdhouses. 

This baby swiss chard was a bonus find, tucked under a canna plant.  

This little goji bush I bought in February did well in the pot and needs to be planted somewhere permanent

Our property has some kind of horrible weed, 5 feet high,  each with hundreds of these little prickers.  I was covered in them after a morning of work.  My pants, my shirt, in my hair.  I don't know what they are but they're the bane of the yard.

.

The local Dollar General store puts their seeds on clearance every fall and I was happy to luck upon them on sale today.  They're inexpensive to begin with but were discounted 70% and then another % on top of that  - tons of seed packets for next year - at a cost of 8 to 13 cents each.

Tonight we had acorn squash for dinner, it's so easy and the second time we've had it this fall.  Cut an acorn squash in half, scoop out the seeds and put face-down in an oiled cast iron skillet.  Into the oven at 400 until fork tender (half an hour).  While it's baking, cook some onion, Italian sausage, apple and greens in a skillet.  Add some pre-cooked rice to the mix  Really easy and good.