So today is the first full day of fall. The autumnal equinox happened at 1:44 PM yesterday Pacific Daylight Savings Time. In honor of autumn, I'm going to post a few photos of what's happening here today.
First off, I saw a little friend sitting on smileycreek's car this morning. Ain't she a beauty? She was about 5 inches in length. For some reason we see preying mantises mostly in the autumn.
Next, as you all know I refurbished the wood shed. Then I stacked two cords of wood...one cord of almond and one cord of walnut to add to the nearly four cords of wood I already had in there that included apple, maple, oak and bay tree.
I also spent a few hours chainsawing some old deck boards and pallets and such to use as kindling. You can see that all stacked up on top of the cords of wood. All I need to do now is take a hatchet to it as needed to chop them into strips of wood about 1 inch square by 12 inches or so in length.
In those plastic bags along the left side I have bark from trees that I use for making coals after I have kindling burning. To make a smoke-free fire, you must have a proper bed of coals! We hope it is a wet winter. We're ready. There is nothing like the heat from a wood stove.
Lets see how our peppers are progressing. The yellow bell peppers are just about ready. I've also let some of my Eisley peppers turn red. They sure look nice and are a bit hotter than when they are yellow.
The pomegranates are also about ready. In about three weeks I'll harvest this lovely bunch.
We finally had our first good rain. It rained 1.94 inches over two days. So fire season is over! That's actually a really big deal where we live. And the nights just started getting cool. After the first rain and the first nights below 50 degrees, mushrooms burst out.
Here is a Chicken of the Woods fungus that just showed up two days ago. It sure is pretty...and edible. It tastes like chicken and has a meaty texture like chicken too. It's often used for a meat substitute for vegetarians. http://en.wikipedia.org/...
Here's a picture of a Chicken of the Woods from last year. Pretty impressive don't you think?
What's up? What you want to talk about tonight?
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