Apples (lots of them!)

Fall finally seems to be here, my own colorful backyard proving that despite the continual warm sunny days, the gardening season is winding down.

Although I've never seen such a beautiful October here in Colorado, one of the best parts (in my opinion) of the season is the hundreds of apple trees in town that are producing bushels and bushels of wonderful apples!

I've been lucky enough to score quite a few bags of apples from co-workers, neighbors and friends who are eager to share their harvest.

So even though I don't technically have apple trees in my garden, I just had to share these lovely photos from apple-sauce making (apple pie came later on!).

Super-easy no-peel applesauce:

8 lbs apples (about 25 medium), cored and quartered (no need to peel!); I just cut around the worm holes and/or bad spots

2 cups filtered water

cinnamon to taste

nutmeg to taste

sugar (optional, depending on how sweet your apples are)

Place apples and water in a large pot, bring to a boil. Cook for 30-35 minutes until apples are soft.

Throw everything into the food processor and pulse until creamy.

Put mixture back into pot, add spices and sugar if necessary, cook through until heated. Easy!

Preparing for frost

Finally, we had our first cloudy, chilly, fallish day here in northern Colorado yesterday after a long stretch of hot and very dry weather. The trees here are turning orange and red and my hot-weather plants are beginning to fade.

Last night we were supposed to get our first frost so I went and picked everything that's prone to frost damage. I picked an entire bowlful of green tomatoes - I'm hoping they'll ripen indoors.

There were a few sad looking zucchini left so I picked them as well (not that I need more zucchini)...

I also got one green onion that popped out of the ground in late august - way after all of the others came and went. Random.

I got a total of two jalapeno peppers, which will be used in chili making this week!

Swiss chard can stand light frosts, but I went ahead and picked some of the bigger leaves (and chopped and froze them), just in case.

To my surprise, I found several short, fat, pudgy carrots. The squirrels made a habit of pulling them up and stealing them right as they were ready for picking. One day I will get my revenge...

This is the largest quantity of green beans I've gotten at once (which isn't saying much).

It ended up not freezing last night and it's supposed to jump back up to near 80 this weekend. I am, however, thankful for the rain we got. This summer has been one of the driest in a long time - we had less than an inch and a half of rain from August through the beginning of October and wildfires were breaking out left and right. 

So I'm thankful for the cool, wet days, even if that means my garden is coming to an end.

Squash update!

Remember those little oval-shaped mystery squashes? Well, they turned into big fat mystery squashes pretty quickly. My best guess is an acorn squash-pumpkin hybrid.
 

 The one on the right looks more like a pumpkin

Judging from the squirrel nibbles, it's the same color inside as an acorn squash. I'm making soup with it tonight, so we'll see what it actually tastes like.

 Before...

After.
 

I ended up with two small Butternut squashes (actually, just one after the squirrels ate one).

The Cocozelle Zucchini squash is producing like crazy, here's a nice U-shaped one.

Or maybe bone-shaped 
 
We'll be eating lots of squash over the next few weeks!