Dreary skies have made it difficult to appreciate the vibrant colors of the leaves, but they’re real nice. Today the sky finally cleared for a few hours, and then a huge dark cloud blew over and dumped a bunch of rain on us in the late afternoon.
The tomato vines are starting to look a bit brown, but we’re still overrun by tomatoes, peppers, eggplants, and tomatillos. We just made some eggplant Parmesan to keep things under control. My food preservation efforts are starting to feel a lot less fun. For inspiration, I called up Jeannie Seabrook, a good friend who owns the Glass Rooster Cannery. She gave me a bunch of new recipes, so hopefully the next round will be more interesting.
We’re trying to grow every edible plant we can think of, including some that prefer conditions other than those we can offer. Cranberries fall into this category, since they thrive in bogs. This year one of our two cranberry plants fruited, and the berries are nearly ripe!
One of our hens laid a rubbery egg without a proper shell. We ate it anyway.
The monarch caterpillars continue to grow. One was missing yesterday (Sunday) and today I couldn’t find any of them. I suspect they went looking for a suitable place to pupate.
The asters are so striking that I couldn’t help but include them here, though I’ve already written about both smooth and New England asters.
Julia Blyth 
I know I’ve written before how much I’m enjoying your blog. It brings back many memories of my childhood on the farm. I had a garden for YEARS and canned or froze so much produce. We moved here 21 years ago and I love the 3/4 acres with all the trees and privacy BUT have tried MANY ways to grow fresh veggies, with little success. I think we have lost enough large trees in the back yard, sadly, that I can put a raised bed in the MIDDLE of the yard and get enough sun to successfully grow our fresh vegetable needs. That’s on my bucket list for next spring.
I should add that this summer I have canned two week sweet sliced pickles and pickle relish, plus have frozen corn, peaches, applesauce. But, this doesn’t take the place of being able to go out into the garden for veggies to eat the next meal.
We have some beautiful New England Asters blooming too. Along the roadside there are blocks of goldenrod punctuated by the NE aster – the contrast is stunning – with occasional clouds of tiny Calico Asters among the mix.
Wood aster at the lake, and New England in the back garden here – I’d forgotten I planted it until the purple popped out there, then I read your blog and remembered what it was! Will be fun to see what comes up in the lake yard after the construction. You’ll have to come identify for me. I hope we get lots of Canadian mayflower back, it makes the perfect “lawn”