autumn in the garden and kitchen

 Perhaps the title of this post should've been wacky weather. It's supposed to get

up to 85 degrees today and boy, is it humid! I have mostly hardwood floors throughout

the house and my bare feet were sticking to the floors and I just felt "icky". So the

A/C just went back on for today. We still need to make a trip up to the garden shop

to get some grasses and hopefully bee balm to plant before the weather gets

colder. We also need to move the Russian Sage plant, and do some other outside

stuff such as caulking and some trim touch-up.

This is as far as I've gotten on fall decorating for my front porch - a little pot

of mums. I'm heading up to the grocery store this afternoon and hoping to

get a couple of fresh pumpkins for the porch.

Funny how some summer plants are still in full bloom, such as the geraniums.

I have a couple of small pots of red geraniums and they're still blooming, too.

This pot on my patio had daisies and sweet potato vines. The daisies have stopped

blooming, but there's some kind of weird vine taking over the patio! It's not the sweet

potato vine, so I'm wondering what it is. It looks like it's coming from the daisies.

The Coneflower and Black-eyed Susan are sadly drying up for the season...

The cooler weather (except for today) calls for some hearty comfort food,

don't you agree? Last night I made beans and cornbread. The beans were

dry Great Northern beans that I soaked overnight and put in the Crockpot the

next morning with chopped onion, uncured organic ham, pepper, parsley,

and a bay leaf. I then covered it with veggie broth and slow-cooked for 8 hours.

Gotta have a pan of cornbread to soak up all that delicious bean broth!

This is one of my go-to recipes for cornbread though I only use 1/8 cup of sugar

instead of the 1/4 cup that the recipe calls for. I always cut down on white sugar

in recipes and have never noticed a difference in taste. We don't need all that sugar!

Happy Thursday, everyone.