3rd week of October 2007
A nip of frost affected a few garden things like zinnia petals, basil and squash leaves but everything else is still green. I'm feeling a bit like a squirrel trying to gather things in like teas for dehydrating, dry seed pods for saving, and soon the last tomatoes to wrap in newspaper so we can enjoy them in salad as long as possible. 
A forecast of rain also prompted me to transplant over 100 more mache seedlings to cold frame areas. We also cooked up two large pie pumpkins that were given to us. The seeds were originally collected from gleanings from a Libby pumpkin patch in Illinois and passed along to friends and family over the years. We saved seeds from the cavity and the thick walls produced many quarts of pumpkin for the freezer plus I saved the stringy cast offs from the Victorio strainer to try using in papermaking someday.
Today was a pleasant sunny fall day and we were able to tackle cutting and binding all the sugar cane before dark. 
Tomorrow the bundles will be taken to the Amish family who will press the canes and boil the sap into molasses. Raising the sugar cane is quite labor intensive and in some ways it might be wiser to just buy molasses from an Amish neighbor but there is a certain sense of nostalgia involved. I remember my grandma Gerber raising a small patch of sugar cane every year and we would all pitch in with stripping the leaves and bundling the canes. We still use the same saw horse to stack the bundles as she did and it is a project that everyone pitches in to get done. I also love the abundance of beautiful seed heads that it produces for me to use in fall decorations and other creations. I will need a good supply this fall as I am doing several children's activities where we'll be making bird feeder ornaments with the sugar cane tops.
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