When your garden gets a very late start, and the good weather holds…maybe October is harvest season? Perhaps you remember that back in August, we had a tree removed. The day we first laid eyes on our new house (a full year ago! Happy house-iversary to us!), we identified that this tree had to go. This spring, when I walked around the yard looking at all the trees and the sun angles and vegetation, I decided the best spot for my garden was….exactly where that tree was standing.

I had to choose a backup location until the tree was removed, and this meant double effort – after the tree is gone, we have to move the garden. Well, people, welcome to moving day!

The night before, I harvested everything out of the garden and dumped all the plants on the compost pile. It was sad, I still had a bunch of tomatillos and tomatoes that were undersized and growing, but I’d decided that we were going to do this project once and do it right. When my parents arrived with the tractor, I’d like to think we were almost completely ready for the work to begin.

For a no-dig garden, first you lay down as many layers of cardboard as you can. I learned from the first garden, where I skimped on cardboard in favor of a larger garden size, and then had extra weeds to deal with. More cardboard, fewer weeds. Then Dad started scooping up the old garden and dumping it into beds.

We smoothed it out into pretty rows. Because we had some ancient stumps ground up when our tree was removed, we also had some rich compost to add to the garden, and it ended up 50% bigger!

Lastly, we dumped leaf mulch into the walkways. This garden is all set to get planted up this spring!

That was a massive, major project. I’m so grateful for the help, we never would have accomplished it on our own. But the day wasn’t over yet. Mom’s neighbor called her up and said grapes were ready. I love homemade grape juice, so I got involved in that project. We picked a few buckets of grapes, then we had to call it a day.

A couple days later, Atlas and I went back over and we “helped” my Mom process and can grape juice. I don’t think we slowed the process down but I’m not entirely sure we helped speed things up. Either way, we ended up with so many jars of delicious, fresh grape juice!

Then I had my tomatillo harvest to contend with. I hadn’t picked a single tomatillo until we cleared out the garden, so I didn’t think I would have very much. I was wrong! It was a shockingly bountiful harvest – these all came from one plant!

In the past, I’ve made roasted salsa verde, but I’m not entirely sure our oven has a broiler, so this time around I grilled the salsa ingredients. The garlic smelled so amazing.

Then into the blender with everything, and voila! Tasty, tasty salsa verde.

Typically we go for a walk in the evening, but with these exhausting projects and all the changing fall colors, lately we’ve been going for a little drive instead. At the beginning of October, things were just getting started.

Only a few days later, we’d reached peak color. I popped the drone up for a bird’s eye view, and found that the whole woods seemed to be on fire!

I started seeing friends post photos of their kids in pumpkin patches and I was like “oh yeah, that’s a thing.” We had good weather and a pumpkin patch nearby so the family packed up and explored. Atlas tried to push this pumpkin over for a while, then curiosity got the better of him and…in the photo he is licking the pumpkin.

He was also very curious about the animals. He hasn’t been around animals too much, but so far he seems to be very gentle and cautious and unafraid. Probably the best case scenario!

As a real last-minute project, we finally got an eyesore out of our yard. Last month we had the house switched to natural gas, and now we’ve gotten rid of the propane tank. It was really full, and the propane company said that they’ll charge us a big fee for how full it is, but also refund us for the propane, so we’ll have to see where that amount lands. What a pain.

Kyle and Atlas took a walk down to the lake and Atlas “chased” the ducks. “Dah! Dah! Dah!”

So, this only brings us to mid-month. Kyle put in a massive amount of effort to get the last big projects done in the camper. On October 14, we moved it away from our house so that Atlas and I could steer clear of Kyle as he winterized the house and finished up the final projects there.

It was kind of shocking to us both, as only a week earlier Kyle had said “So…what if we can’t get the camper ready in time to leave this year? What does travel look like then?” And I think I kind of panicked and then we both rearranged our schedules to prioritize the projects that were absolutely necessary and skip everything else. Then he started joking about “Let’s move the camper away from home on Friday” and I didn’t take him seriously. We moved the camper on Friday. And in real time, we’re pretty far from home!

So, if you’re sick of garden photos and house projects, hang in there. Things are about to get really different around here!