My Beautiful Boy...Beamish

Autumn Schnauzer Splendor

One of these is not like the others

Never thought I would be excited by a white egg, but....here it is our first white egg.  All our chickens have been breeds that lay brown eggs, I love that, and although they are all different shades of brown, I thought it would be fun to have the occasional white egg thrown in.  This was one of the main reasons I purchased our Silver Grey Dorking chicks this Spring and voila, our first Dorking egg arrived yesterday!  It is tiny, as all first eggs are, everything I read says they will always lay a smallish egg, but, look!! it is white, well perhaps a little beige when viewed on it's own, however, line it up with the rest and I call it white.

Don't let anyone tell you Unicorns don't exist....

...I have a secret one in my garden

Autumn days

 We have had a small vegetable garden for a few years, but, this Spring we expanded deciding to grow as much of our own healthy, chemical free food.  The only fertilizer I use is from what is produced here, rabbit and chicken manures are composted along with kitchen and garden waste.  As I feed the animals organic foods even our compost is chemical free.
We had some wonderful successes in the garden this year and made some dreadful mistakes.  It is all a learning curve and every year we should be able to make better decisions based on what grew well for us the prior year, what we like and what not to grow too much of.
I have started to clean up the garden, preparing beds to overwinter, planting next years garlic, feeding the soils with nutrient rich compost.  Next Spring I will not be digging any new beds, I hope our garden next year will be far superior to this year.  Isn't that part of being a gardener, always optimistic, always planning.

Such beauty in the dying

Never have I seen the wild apple trees bearing as much fruit as this year

 I started these Cosmos from seed, they were HUGE towering high in the garden, only problem was rain and winds would blow them over.  I was going to take them off my list for next year until I saw the bees clamouring on the many flowers yesterday.  These are one of the few flowers still blooming madly in October.  I guess next year I will plant again for the bees, just have to properly stake them to avoid them falling over.

My Fall salad planting is doing well, salads and kale daily

Seeing this yesterday makes pesticide free garden worthwhile.  Ms.Mantis is heavy with eggs and next Spring we should have a new family of Pray Mantis in the veggie patch helping us to keep those annoying insect pests under control.

We're watching you

I think I could do an entire photo blog with only photos of schnauzers in shadows. 

Happy Thanksgiving

Long weekend in Canada to celebrate our Thanksgiving. Hoping the weather is good and we get to spend it outside

Mr.Cyrus

Now that is what you call a Black Standard Schnauzer!

schnauzers, so many sizes, colours and finishing touches

 Two totally different schnauzers, both Standards, one black ears cropped, one Pepper & Salt ears natural

Starting with the Pepper & Salt as I did I knew that schnauzers came in MANY different shades of grey, but who would of thought that Black could vary so much?  Trick questions, they are not suppose to, but, believe me they do!

october contrails

Harvest 2013

I have been eating from the garden since the first week of June.  When the tomatoes were coming fast and furious I was roasting daily and freezing.  The garden is winding down now, I expect we will be getting frost in a week or two.  Today I picked what will likely be my last big tomato harvest, a good 10lbs of beautiful summer goodness that we will enjoy this winter when it will be hard to believe that we were once able to walk to the garden and put together an entire meal grown ourselves.  I have garlic, onions and potatoes stored, I imagine enough to get me through to the end of January.  I have turned peppers into amazing Sriracha Sauce, fermented hot peppers to make our own version of Tabasco, roasted sweet red ones and frozen them for winter meals.  We have corn and green beans frozen, and canned pickles of various types.

My first ever harvest of Jerusalem Artichokes was today.  An interesting tuber from the sunflower family.  I roasted a few in Walnut Oil seasoned with Rosemary & Thyme and served over a bed of lettuce & baby kale from the garden, sprinkled with roast pecans and pumpkin seeds for an amazing Autumn Salad.

I love this time of the year, the weather is amazing, warm sunny days, beautiful cool nights for sleeping.  Soon we will be starting the woodstove and moving inside for a few months, until then I will enjoy the garden and all the end of the season chores as we lead up to putting it all to bed until next Spring.

Multi-facited

The many shades and textures of Daisy