Little joys in my yard

   And now the garden is about cleaned out, we picked the apple tree clean as we could reach and made applesauce with everything and we're enjoying the crisp fall and fireplace mornings and blue sky afternoons for playing outdoors.
  There were several little joys for me in the vegetable garden this year. I smiled every time I saw the volunteer squash that grew out of our compost pile, we have yet to eat it. And the pole beans that overripened and turned into dry beans. This was news to me! Of course I then entertained the idea of growing all my own dry beans.... but decided that probably was not necessary. And all my lovely onions now hanging dried above my grain bins in the garage. I only have three braids worth and lots of tiny ones, but it is so satisfying to make a soup with them! Although they took over a bunch of the garden, we are now enjoying the sugar pumpkins on our front porch. I learned to stagger my planting with carrots and have one more small patch slowly growing from a mid-august planting. They may not make it, but I had to give it a try. With baby coming this winter, I was looking back at all the work and attempting to determine what we could do and enjoy next year without overdoing it. I mean, we don't have to grow anything... but I like to. Just like I don't have to make my kids leggings and accessories, but I enjoy it. Just trying to keep the priorities in line. So even if we do just a little garden, the kids will be able to experience the whole planting/growing/ harvesting thing and it draws us outside more.

  Well, there's a start to blogging again. I intend to go at it more regularly for all the little goings on around our place. I'll get to the details about school next, I'm pretty excited about how our schedule has finally solidified into somthing that works.