“The RoseBouquet”

Saturday was a a wonderful Indian summer day. Sunny, warm, and yet with the taste of autumn in the air. A perfect day to make that garden shed really mine. A teen age girl had volunteered to come help me after her morning youth group meeting, so in the morning I did a bit of cleaning inside and then went out to start carrying my garden tools and scrap lumber into the shed.

Close to noon I realized that I better get the paints ready so that when I had picked up Chelsea and brought her over, we could get right to the painting of the shed. I brought up a number of pails of paint from the basement and opened and stirred several. Finally I decided on the pail and a half of stain for the first coat. The other amounts were smaller and might do for trim - or if I should get carried away, then maybe to decorate it like a gingerbread house.

This stain looked like a thin grey soup, and the wood drank it up in the first coat Chelsea and I gave it. We decided there was enough of the stain to do a second coat. This one stayed more on the surface and made the shed glitter as if we were painting with silver! Wow! I felt quite pleased.

Later it dried to a plain grey. Still it did wonders for making the shed look more perky and clean. We went into the house for a cookie break, and Chelsea showed me her photos of her trip to Egypt this past summer with Teen Missions.

After Chelsea’s Mom came to pick her about 4:30 or 5, I went back out and although the light green outdoor paint was quite lumpy I decided to try it on the trim on the back of the shed. Well, it gooped up the brush quite a lot, but it would do, I decided, so I finished the job.

I’ve added photos to this page, 903-garden-shed.shtml

In a way I had hoped there might be time to dig up my potato crop too, but as I was about to start I could hear Dad scolding me for trying to do this so late in the day. He would always insist on digging up the potatoes early in the day, brush them off and let them dry on the grass until the end of the day, so that they wouldn’t have moist soil on them when he brought them in for the winter, as that would pretty well guarantee some potatoes would go mushy and bad.

I marvelled that just memories of what Dad would say or do could guide me now. I decided to dig up just one small pail of the purple potatoes for use in the kitchen. Mainly because I wanted to see how big they had grown. I dug up two plants and had a good pot full, (which I cooked on Sunday in the crock), but they were only half or a third of the size Dad usually grew.

Mind you, he liked to plant them in April, not mid-June as I had done this year.

This morning I see that the trees all around have golden leaves. We’ve had some touches of frost and it is high time I harvest the garden for the winter. But this week is so busy it will have to wait until this next Saturday. Basically it will be my potato crop, a number of green squash (I guess they can ripen in the house), and my dahlia roots. I have two dahlia blooms!

The tomato plants grew to a good size and have lots of blossoms, but it’s too late to expect any fruit from them. Too bad. Well next year I will start my garden earlier again, and have a bountiful harvest of everything.