Chill in the garden

So, in my last post, I mentioned a frost.

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.

Windows: Done!

Well, not quite done. But close enough! Evan installed the 7th and final window of the great window installation project (version 2008) yesterday -- and climbed up on the porch roof to do some final insulating, caulking and other finishing touches.

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!

Fall roots

Last year we had some great turnips. This year it appears we're repeating that success:

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...