The leaves are suddenly blown away, the clouds are moving along fast -- it could be March, or November. Alas, it's November... and five or six long months until springtime even starts to tease us.

Meanwhile, the pond, the mountain, the land around us is all growing more serious as we move through fall, though still hints of beauty.

We had a light frost earlier this fall, but not a "hard" frost. In other words, what struck was a frost that killed off the end of the tomato plants, the beans, and a few other more sensitive parts of the garden.

The day before, I got a few last good photos of the garden.

Here are the beets, behind some spinach:

The beets are actually still limping along post-frost. I'm wondering if a frost makes beets taste better? I'll have to pull them up soon, though -- I wouldn't want to risk losing them. And the tops are starting to look feeble.

Here was the garden, pre-frost.

The falling-over beans plant in the front, and the flowers (Mexican marigolds), bit the dust. To the right of the beans are some beets. In addition to the spinach, of which I have several rows (at various stages of maturity), I also still have a couple plantings of swiss chard and turnips.

But, sadly, I spent most of last weekend's garden time doing the least pleasant stuff: pulling up the dead tomato stalks, herbs, etc., and generally cleaning up in preparation for winter.

I believe he has some outside-the-house caulking to complete on the seventh window and, like, the second window that he installed. But for the most part, window installation for this year is done! We (well, Evan) have/has more windows to do next year, but first we want to take a minute to bask in the heat that's no longer fast running out the cracks in our bedroom windows.

Just in time, too. Last night we had our first frost!

So far, we've roasted them with potatoes, and next week I plan on making some more turnips -- this time trying on the stove, in a glazed form (in other words, cooked in butter), with some parsley.

The beets are also looking great, though they are a few weeks behind the turnips. Hopefully will be picking the beets in, oh, two weeks or so...

For every success, we have some flops. For instance, the beans never really came through this year...

There are occasionally some big ole snapping turtles surfacing in the pond or the mud by the stream; this little guy was only a few inches long.

They were all very beautiful, similar in size and jewel-like:

We dunked them in hot water then shocked them in cold water so they were easy to peel. Next we packed them in jars with lemon juice and hot water. Then loaded the jars into the hot water bath canner.

After a few hours of this, I also tried my hand at a batch of chutney which required 10 cups of tomatoes (I used large red ones, several varieties), plus cucumber, onion, red pepper, vinegar and some other ingredients.

In the end both canning projects turned out OK, though I think the chutney was a little runny. Here are the quart jars of tomatoes, in front; behind are the pint jars of chutney.

After all of that, I wasn't sure I'd do any more. But the tomatoes just keep coming. So I cooked down another huge kettle of them -- I'm thinking they will be the last for this year -- and hope to put them up tomorrow night.

During this whole process, Evan and I remarked to each other that the massive canning project(s) would not have been possible on our old tiny stove, pre-kitchen renovation!

The fact that we cook every day, or nearly every day, is actually pretty special on its own -- but if we posted about that with any diligence, this would cease to be a house blog and would be just a blog about what we're cooking every day.

However, in the past few days an abundance of tomatoes has led us to a cooking arena which is off our normal routine. We broke out the hot water bath canner (and a trusty canning/preserving cookbook) and put up some tomatoes.

We actually had buckets and buckets of tomatoes. Here are some of them, including heirlooms. We also had tons of plum tomatoes:

After we cooked down the most ripe ones, Evan put them through the food mill. We then cooked that sauce some more:

Then we ladled them in quart jars with 2 tbsp of lemon juice apiece. We ended up with five quart jars, which we put in the canner for 35 minutes. Here they are before I lowered the canning rack into the canner for processing:

I burned myself a couple times on hot water. And the kitchen got very hot. We actually did the cooking and canning at night, which was good because the temperature was lower overall, so it only got to like 90 in the kitchen.

After they'd processed in boiling water for 35 minutes, I let them sit in the canner for another five minutes, then extracted them from their steaming bath so they could sit quietly overnight. Voila!

Not sure what we're going to do with the old windows:

So, three windows down -- five more to go. And maybe next year we'll do another five or so, after we see how these survive the winter. Yes, we've got that many more windows to replace.

For now, we are overjoyed at how nice the new windows look. Viewing them from inside (these are all in the living room), they look clean and sturdy. And, unlike the old windows, you can open them. Ah, nice to feel a breeze in the house...

Really excited, though, about the corn.

Last year we had corn but various things -- bugs, deer, other bugs -- ate it. I think we ended up with only a couple ears. Last year, the Japanese beetles also ate up the beans until around September, after which the beans rebounded and we were flush with beans for about a month.

So, 2008: very sad to report that aphid-like bugs infested my summer squash plants, and some of the pumpkins, so I had to pull them up. But, unlike last year, the corn and beans are flourishing. Here's the first ear that we picked, and then ate, last week. With a couple beans in the background.

To fill in where the squash had been, I forged ahead with 2008 Garden 2.0 -- lots of little exciting experiments: First, turnips, pak choi (supposed to be like bok choi) and swiss chard. Like, two feet of each. Just to see how they do. Planted those last week and they're starting to sprout. Turnips planted in late summer last year turned out great, so we'll see....

Today continued the experiment: Planted spring onions, spinach... and carrots. I suspect it is a little late for carrots in our zone 5/6 climate, but we might get some baby ones. We've got more than two months of summer left, after all!

Also, Evan started replacing the windows. He started today and got 90 percent of the work done on one. I didn't take pictures as we were crunched for time when he started, but we will document next weekend when he ventures to do the next one. He's planning on replacing eight windows before winter comes knocking....

Also... what a difference a month makes. If you scroll back to the "Chomp" entry from June 10, you'll see a pretty barren plot that had been made even more paltry due to somebody eating our tomato plants down to the nibs.

Thanks to Evan's fence, here it is today. The tomatoes have now grown to become nearly a solid mass of plants.

The other side of the plot is sweet corn, still developing.

One more thing: We picked the garlic. We braided it and hung it in the smokehouse to dry. Don't know how long it will take to use it all; we probably got 40 cloves of garlic!

But the truth is, I didn't plant this squash. I planted squash, yes. The squash plants that I sowed are growing quite nicely...

However, this particular specimen is the volunteer offspring from some flat yellow summer squash of 2007.

The squash that I planted are probably a week or two behind this squash, which sprouted in-between the shallots, all by its lonesome. When I realized what it was, I decided to let it go and see what happened.

It's looking nice. We'll keep it!

All things considered, it didn't take overly long to build. Here's one of the specimens that I hope will survive.

One or two of the other tomato plants were almost completely eaten away; nothing remains but the stem. Interestingly, the hungry critter went for the heirloom tomatoes and didn't make dinner out of one of the non-heirloom plants that I'd also planted.

Nate seems to be enjoying the fence as a new obstacle to run around.

After we finished our planting, it rained on and off for most of the rest of the weekend. So, our timing was good, in terms of planting. We also planted beans and some summer squash. I hope to be posting their growing progress here, so Salma can see how they do!

The chives are blooming. They looked particularly vibrant in the rain.

Nearly all work around here happens on the weekends. During the week, we're, you know, working at our work jobs. Anyway, last weekend there was a lot of tearing up old overgrown flower beds, wrestling with rows of weeds along the edges of buildings, scrambling to put some order on areas that were beginning to go wild. All crammed into a couple hours when Nate naps in the afternoon.

We started by beautifying, or trying to. Planted flowers, clipped back weeds, turned in compost, nothing too monumental -- just a few hours of digging, tearing, pushing, tossing, panting, etc., etc. Then on Sunday I decided it was time to tear up an old flower bed that had been overgrown with what I think was lots and lots of yarrow, as well as a few tiger lillies and a bunch of weeds.

We carted off the lilies (above photo, in wheelbarrow) and replanted them by the side of a building near the pond. From the side of that building, we carted away a jumble of weeds and dead leaves.

I took a photo of the tiny collection of herbs that replaced the old hard-bitten yarrow patch, but it looks like nothing, so I'll wait to post that until I have a decent "after" photo ... like maybe in August.

I planted rosemary (two plants, one of which is supposed to be hardy to zone 5, and we're zone 6, so I have high hopes). Also planted tarragon and Greek oregano, both of which are supposed to survive here. Evan lined my new little herb garden with rocks.

This is actually my second herb patch; the first one contains a bounty of sage and thyme, both planted two summers ago and which have survived the winters thus far.

As for what I think is or was yarrow (or whatever it is that we yanked up), I potted up a few specimens for potential relocation somewhere else, though I think Evan would be happy if I trashed them all.

I also have some mint, in a big huge pot, that I kept alive over the winter, which I need to plant somewhere soon. But I know that spreads easily, so I really need to find the right location.

Worked on expanding two small plots of garden yesterday -- joining them together to create one bigger plot. Lots of hacking up the turf, knocking off dirt and earthworms, and carting away wheelbarrows of the weed-grass sod.

Evan mixed in some compost and mushroom soil and evened out the old and new garden sections. We now have two plots as pictured below; the other plot is just a big brown rectangle of dirt and stones and a couple weary thyme plants, so it doesn't make for much to look at.

But here's the newer plot, in which we have a few things growing already:

Evan got the tiller going to loosen up all of the soil on the far side of the plot, where we then planted two rows of onions.

The onion-y looking rows in the photo are actually garlic that we planted last fall. I'm hoping/ expecting it to be ready to be pulled up in June. Garlic is new territory for us, so we'll see...

The part of the garden in the front of the picture is planted with some of this garlic, plus shallots (planted last week; still not sprouted), cilantro and baby spinach. A few of the baby spinach plants surprised us and survived the winter; I planted some more seeds of the same in-between the survivors, and they are just starting to sprout above the earth.

Today we got lots of rain! I hope we'll see some growin' going on by the weekend.