The Beauty of Bittersweet

Everybody is probably getting a little tired of garden pictures, but I can't help it! I'm just having such a great time decorating it. I just go and stand out there for a little while every day enjoying all the colors --- and especially the swans! Well, Mom and I went to the auction again on Friday and picked up several more things. One of them was something that we've really been hoping would show up: Bittersweet! We got enough to make a little swag for the fence, so I put that up yesterday. We also took some of the berries off the vine and have them drying on a piece of newspaper. Apparently, it shouldn't be too hard to cultivate our own plants from seed, so we figured that it wouldn't hurt to give it a try! We also won two boxes of gourds, so there are now two more swan gourds, bushel gourds, dipper gourds, birdhouse gourds and some other "name-unknown-to-me" variety. Combined with the nine "Long Island Cheese" squashes (that are the size of small pumpkins) that Mom and I bought at the Farmers' Market on Saturday . . . we had to send Dad down to the Mill for two more straw bales. I tried everything to "artfully" arrange them, but in the end I just had make a big "island" out of it to spread everything out. All of these gourds are, hopefully, going to dry out. I'm just dying for Elizabeth to be able to paint them!



Okay, so I've done some things outside of the Gnome Garden, too! I mowed the lawn on Thursday and, unless something in the weather changes drastically, it will be the last time of the year. Most of the grass has gone dormant already --- it's just the green weeds in the grass that are still up, I think. Elizabeth and I also hung some felt travel pendants on the line to air out. We picked these up at a garage sale, so we're thinking of using them to decorate our bedroom a bit. Aren't they cool?!

We've been doing a lot more canning lately. Every day this week, in fact. We're also trying to bake pumpkins, so that we don't end up with thirty of them in the house! Mom and I made pumpkin pies on Saturday night with a "Peanut Pumpkin". Wow! They are amazing. It's a really sweet, creamy pumpkin with a fantastic yield. We were really impressed.

The only other major news is that Elizabeth and I finally got our driving permits again. This is only the second one that I've ever had, and it's the first time that I've been in the driver's seat of a car in eight years. I drove a bit the other day without any major catastrophies. I think Mom was more than a little nervous, though!