November 2010 Archives

Just about this time last year as the final negotiation over the selling price of my house was concluding, the inspection was basically a slam dunk. For a 100-year old house, the inspector found little to be concerned about. The number one item on the list was the front stairs and landing where the lovely Seattle rains -- and some questionable prior construction -- brought on some significant wood rot.


All along, I knew it was going to be the first serious expense for me and then as the summer wore on, I seemingly saw the stairs worsen by the day.

Oh yeah, blogging about my gardening exploits/experiments. I knew I had forgotten something. So on the coldest day of the winter to date, here's the final crop report.

Late summer sun, or probably more accurately, autumn sun finally ripened a small handful of my cherry tomatoes. The early girls never fully ripened. (Wow, there's a loaded sentence if I ever wrote one.) I was impressed that I was able to grow tomatoes from seeds, but like just about everything else I planted last spring, I'm going with vegetable starts next year to give myself a fighting chance of making a salad at least from my own yard.


The squash, fall and summer, never made it. At one point, there were a ton of blossoms on the summer squash and the start of what looked to be two or three fruits, but the end tally was a zero. The fall squash never showed their faces.

The lemon cucumbers looked promising earlier in the summer but their early view turned into something of a mirage. I was able to harvest a couple cucumbers, and while tasty, the skin was pretty tough. Probably hadn't fully ripened and I was being -- surprise -- impatient.


OK, moral of the story: good thing there are farmers' markets nearby. Or, wait 'til next year!