I think the canning season is winding down! I really, really think it's true this time... It felt like yesterday was the last tomato hurrah with 14 more quarts of salsa, a round of diced tomatoes and a round of juice. The extent of my canning today was three pints of tomato paste. I love watching plants get started and grow and flower and set fruit. And at this time of year, I must admit to feeling a sense of relief when I see the tomato vines browning and the bean beetles finishing off the bean plants.
There are still a number of things flourishing, most notably our pepper plants. I've heard others talk about what a great pepper year it has been so there is likely nothing super special about our experience - it must just be a good pepper year. I normally freeze a lot of green peppers at the end of the season when we pick them all before the first frost. Otherwise, we more or less keep up with eating our peppers. There was no chance of it this year, despite Kali eating 2-4 large red peppers almost daily for snacks. I've frozen lots of red peppers and the new fun discovery is that they are super tasty dried. I've got another batch in the dehydrator as I type. I tried just a few green peppers in my first round, assuming we would not like them and just stick with the red. The green are tasty too so I think that's what we'll be doing with the ones left on the plants when the threat of frost arrives.
As the food processing flurry slowly subsides, I am starting to notice more things, other than just the tomatoes and peppers and buckets of beans and cucumbers... It's like my mind starts to have enough space in it to take in new things again. Today as I walked out to pick a few red and white raspberries, the sight of golden rod with the grain amaranth in the backdrop was stunning. I'm loving the feel of fall in the air and the beautiful colors surrounding us. It was delightful to head for the porch swing in the swing set after supper and take in the twilight with Kali on one side of me, Jason on the other, and Alida squirming every which way on our laps. 
The trombone squash continue to keep us supplied with summer squash, and the few we have missed will be enjoyed as winter squash. I've been drying those too and find them to be a fun alternative to tortilla chips with the abundance of fresh salsa we have been consuming. Most of the bean plants are all but dead and the beans on them are so riddled by bean beetle damage that they no longer appear appetizing. But these purple hyacinth beans are making up for the others right now (in beauty...they are toxic to eat). I caught a little caterpillar enjoying a walk along the vine (and maybe a nibble?)
I'm pretty sure our root cellar is fuller than it has ever been. And that is a good thing as our girls' appetites are growing along with them. There are a few empty jars and a few openings on the shelves, which I hope will be filled yet with more applesauce. There is likely to be some more meat and broth canning in our future (as soon as this week since today was a chicken butchering day for Jason). But otherwise, unless some opportunity we can't resist presents itself, I think we will be drying and freezing the small amounts of things left to harvest. And we'll be turning our attention to finishing out digging potatoes and before too long sweet potatoes.
Since pictures don't quite get the whole root cellar in view I've thought, though kind of silly, that it would be fun to video the shelves. So here's the fruits of our labors; a less than one minute tour. Hold onto your seats!
Now, since I know that that video was hardly a thriller, I'll include one more here that might be a bit more enjoyable for most of you. It is just a glimpse into the backdrop of our lives most days of the week. Alida cracks us up often! There is usually a string of words coming out of her mouth at any given moment and she misses nothing! Here's just one example - when we were in West Virginia last weekend, she was in a very "rammy" (tired, wiggly, mischievous) mood one evening. She wanted to play more games. I told her I didn't think she had enough stamina to stay up any longer. She, of course, disagreed. I said that she didn't look to me like a girl with much stamina left and then I noted out loud that she didn't even know what I was talking about. I said, "What does stamina mean?" She set her little jaw, looked right at me and said, "Strength." I was speechless...One of her favorite things to say right now is "nobody loves me." That is usually when she wants some attention and then wants us to sing "nobody loves me, everybody hates me, guess I'll go eat worms..." She knows a lot of songs by the right words but is more often apt to make up her own variations of songs. Here she is doing some kind of little jingle about how "there was some cats on their heads." Enjoy!
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