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We picked the world's biggest, most beautiful, absolutely perfect yellow capsicum/bell pepper this morning. It's like a work of art all by itself.

Vegetables are just plain gorgeous.
 

mrsmig

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Got more potting soil yesterday and transplanted the Terra Cotta, Cherokee Carbon and Bread & Salt seedlings into their quart-sized homes. Job #1 right now is packing for my trip, but if I can squeeze it in, I'll get some radishes sowed. The weather is supposed to be warm and sunny here for the next couple of days,* and I'd love to take advantage of it.

ETA: Got the radishes in, fed the birds, treated the area around our basement windows with diatomaceous earth to deter ants, which are already making their early-spring explorations into the house (it's their favored route).

*In New Hampshire, not so much.
 
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mccardey

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My beans came up! Which was - three days. Is that a record? Our weather is crazy here. I'm shut inside because of the allergy thing and it's driving me crazy watching stuff grow. (The onion weed is doing particularly well...)
 
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It's autumn here: warm in the sun, cool in the shade, and flippin' cold overnight with lows in the single digits (C). The peach trees are finally bare of fruit, and the fallen, damaged fruit are so sweet and juicy that the honeybees are sucking the juice up like nectar. I wonder what peach honey would taste like? Pears are also collected, barring a handful on the Winter Nellis, and I'm giving a first go at dehydrating a couple of the Bon Cretiens today. I've left the last apples on the trees for the birds; if any remain when the dehydrator is free in a week or so, I'll try drying some apples and maybe making apple fruit leather.

I'll get probably three more batches of tomato paste made before those plants give up the ghost, and possibly one or two small batches of beans. The courgettes are producing their last fruits. The remaining corn bed (the one the cows didn't get into and raze to the ground the other night) will be ready for harvest next week. The capsicums are just now roaring into production, and the pumpkin vines starting to die back -- they'll be ready to harvest by the end of the month. The choko/chayote are starting to flower, but no sign of fruit yet.

It's a good thing we recently got a new (to us; third hand, given to us for free) much larger kitchen table, because it is purely covered with fruit, veg, and labelled cups of seeds being dried and saved for next year.

The baby chooks are at that stage where they're feathered and willing to wander away from mum for a bit, until they realise they're lost and they screech their heads off. And they're small enough to sneak under/over/through fences, so they're getting into places they ought not be. Naughty little fluffybums!

Fingers crossed that the oven-fix-it-man can fix my dead oven quickly and easily (and cheaply) on Monday.
 

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I've taken my seedling bench from storage and set it back up. Got three pots sown with lychnis, wall flower and an experimental trifolium rubens. I'm not even sure the latter one's flowers even have seeds, but it sort of looks like it, so experiment time! All three should be able to cope with frost if we're still getting some.

Had a good look at my irisses and had to rub off a surprising amount of aphids for so soon in the year. Look pals, I am willing to give up on the walnuts, acorns, hazelnuts, cherries, berries and some apples and the occassional flower. The wildlife can have it. But the irisses are OFF LIMITS. Touch them and I will destroy you.

Still holding hope for at least one fancy flower this year or I'll hold true to my promise to buy no more bearded irisses. One flower is all I need!

Also had the first tick of the year. WTF? Clearly this winter hasn't been cold enough to kill them off. That doesn't promise well for the rest of the year.
 
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