Fall and Interesting Fruit

Since my last blog post, I've had to admit that summer is completely over. Leaves have changed colour and mostly fallen, we've had frost at night, and I've had to break down and wear socks every day. The garden has been cleaned up, the roses are covered, and I just dragged all the pots into the shed.

The backyard, prepped for winter

I always have mixed feelings this time of year. On one hand, I'm usually ready to be done with weeding, watering, picking tomatoes, transplanting, wondering what's eating the hostas, picking more tomatoes, deciding that beside the cushion spurge was a lousy place to plant a peony, cursing the "grass" in the front yard, tripping through the maze of squash vines to pick tomatoes...... But I really do love being outside in the yard among the plants. We had such a nice September and October that everything just kept on growing. I picked the last rose about two weeks ago, and the zinnias and lupins were still blooming until the most recent frost. I think the mint and thyme are still growing! It's a bit melancholic to watch the end of the growth cycle and to anticipate the inevitable coming of winter.

Late fall flowers - the zinnia on the right started out the paler shade of pink, then got darker as the weather cooled.

Few realize this, but zinnias make excellent hiding places

Of course, with fall comes the harvest of various items. We got a reasonable number of carrots, but

not many beets or potatoes ( I'm often glad that we're not trying to grow our winter food supply). For the last few years, including this one, our most bountiful harvest has been from our Aronia bush. I got the bush a number of years ago, mainly to fill in some space along the back fence. The ad in the catalogue extolled its attractive red fall colour and, in passing, mentioned some berries which could be made into juice. Well, the plant does turn a lovely shade of red in the fall. The leaves drop about 4 seconds after said lovely shade is achieved, so it doesn't really provide the fall colour I was hoping for. However, it does provide increasing numbers of berries. We didn't do anything with the berries for the first few years - there weren't that many, and they tasted like tart saskatoons, so they weren't great for eating out of hand.

As the harvest grew, I made some syrup, but ended up freezing most of the berries because I had no clue what to do with them. This year, we ended up with something like 8 cups (to join the 10 or so cups already frozen), so I resolved to find some use for them.

As an aside, Ken's dad and uncles are mainly former commercial fishermen and current recreational fishermen and hunters. I always tease him that for his family, the first questions asked on seeing a new animal are: "What is it? Can I eat it? What's the daily limit?" I've come to realize that I'm really similar with new fruits: "What is it? Can I eat it? How do I tell if it's ripe?"

Anyway, I've found that aronia, while not well known in this area, is popular in some areas of the US

(one of those dark purple antioxidant superfruits, y'know) - there are even aronia growers' associations! And importantly, lots of recipes. It's really good added to a regular banana bread recipe; I'm planning to make a pie at some point. One of the things I did with leftover Thanksgiving turkey was a black bean chili, adapted from this recipe. The aronia provided a sweet/tart counterpoint to the spice in the rest of the dish (one of my adaptations was to use chipotle for part of the chili powder requirement, so I suspect my version was spicier than the original).

Something you don't see every day - grapes on a telephone pole

Boyz in the Yard - seasonal inspection