Merry meet all,
Welcome October! Bring us your glory and your magic, pumpkins, gourds, ghosts and goblins! I’m brewing a pot of elderberry syrup on the stove. I was busy this morning getting the garden ready for winter.
I harvested a lot of herbs from my garden: nettle, lemon balm, mints, mugwort, sage, lemongrass. Not sure what to do about the tulsi and geranium. The potato vines are not ready yet. 2 of my tomato plants are just now beginning to bear fruit. I can’t believe it. A squash plant bears lot of flowers but no fruit. My other tomato plant’s growing cherry tomatoes and the beans and cukes are picking up their pace. I wish I had a leaf shredder. I usually just keep the leaves on the soil till spring. They blanket my garden against the chill. I love my compost tumbler. I cleared the bed of the brown old tiger lilies and put them into the compost bin tumbler. I put the mint and the nettle that was growing in the pot into the garden. I uprooted invasive lemon balm and put that in a new spot. You can never get rid of lemon balm, for sure!
The raspberry canes showing their last fruits for the fall. I’m waiting and saving every single berry to make jam! I harvested about 8 cups of elderberries. I used six cups of the fresh elderberries to make a syrup and I plan to use the rest of the remaining elderberries to make a tincture! First I have to dry the elderberries in my dehydrator and I may add the herbs I just brought in too.
I plan to have my garden properly prepped for winter. The annuals can go straight to the compost pile and the perennials will be bedded down for their long earned sleep. I sprinkled elecampane seeds into the soil. The seeds may come up next spring! I hope so. I was hoping to find St. John’s wort on the trail but there was no sign of it. Next spring, I may find it and add the cheery yellow flowers and plants to my garden!
I want to continue making homemade bird suet for the birds this winter. I will have to find a way to keep my compost tumbler rotating to make the compost viable for spring despite ice and the cold. I hope I can still use it this winter. I’m still waiting for my potato harvest! I’m going to measure the total amount of potatoes I harvested! I will still do the offerings to the garden spirits and fey who helped my garden blossom and grow so amazingly this year!
Blessings, Spiderwitch
