Harvest Time - A Guest Post by Diane Marsden

Please welcome our newest blog contributor, Diane Marsden.  Diane and her husband, Lloyd, hail from Sheridan, Wyoming where, it spite of a short summer season and sudden changes in weather, they have managed to create quite a garden paradise.  - Enjoy!  Thea

I love this time of year when we can pick, harvest and process the fruits of labor from our gardens.

                                                                                      

Late August and early September is harvest time in Wyoming.   I have about thirty lavender plants that I cut to make make bundles. When I picked the lavender this year and brought the basket in the house, it smelled heavenly. Lavender is lovely in bundles, as sachets and potpourri and can be used for cooking.

We grow a lot of other herbs in our garden, as well. I make pesto from the basil and freeze it, I also use our oregano in my homemade tomato sauce.  We pick tomatoes all fall, then make and freeze quarts of sauce, using our garden onions, garlic, basil, oregano and a spoonful of sugar to give the sauce a little sweetness.

We usually harvest our garlic and tie in a braid for drying over the winter.  We store our potatoes, carrots and beets in our basement over the winter.  This year we grew watermelon and pumpkins, but will not harvest them until later in the fall, if we don’t get an early freeze.   We are still harvesting broccoli; even with the hot weather, it is still quite good.

Our property incudes a small orchard and we have several apple trees. We harvest apples for making applesauce or we cut and freeze for pies we will make later. Our apples are especially sweet this year.

We don’t grow them, but we get peaches from Colorado and usually can over 20 quarts. 

We grow corn and green beans and they are usually ready to harvest this time of year.  Some years we freeze the corn off the cob, but mostly we share our harvest.

While we try to keep the wildlife like blackbirds and raccoons out of the garden, we realize sometimes we just have to share. The raccoons are very cute. Lloyd leaves the radio on to deter the critters.

My husband makes delicious wine from chokecherries a local bush berry.  He has also made wine from wild plum and Nanking cherries and sometimes rhubarb or apple. Thus, we enjoy wine all year and share with our friends. Lloyd even made a wonderful wine cellar in our basement.

The exterior of the cellar is made of limestone with an old door, aged to appear as if the wine cellar is very old. The temperature inside stays at 55 degrees and we can also store carrots, potatoes and beets in there.

We harvest our concord grapes and make grape juice or sometimes wine. This year we decided to make juice. We pick the grapes off the vines and de-stem them. Then we crush the grapes, run them through a press and then we can them in glass jars.  The juice is wonderful.

I enjoy using the bounty from the garden to decorate for Fall. This time of year my sunflowers and zinnias are lovely in the garden.  I dry them for fall arrangements. In my flower gardens, the perennials that are now blooming include coneflowers, blanket-flowers, balloon-flower, veronicas, Russian sage, Joe Pye weed, shrub roses, sedums, and asters. The blooms are so cheerful and I love how the sunflowers seem to follow the sun.

My husband also grows a black bearded wheat. 

We cut these into shocks and use for fall decorating.  We have used the same seed for planting the wheat from the original bundle in bought in Montana many years ago. It looks lovely with pumpkins in the autumn season.

I’m looking forward to the Autumn season -  the season of color - and I’m excited to decorate with my corn stalks, home grown pumpkins, asters and baskets of mums.

photography by Diane Marsden 

Diane Marsden moved West from the East Coast for college and never came back (except for visits with her family and friends!)  She is a photographer specializing in wildflowers and natural landscapes, master gardener, poet, writer, and world traveler. Diane and Lloyd opened their garden this past June for THE ART IN THE GARDEN, an art show displaying the work of local area artists – including Diane’s photography and Lloyd’s exquisite woodworking. Here’s a link for more information on their garden tour:  http://www.sheridanmedia.com/news/art-garden-tour87212