It's Not That Easy Being Green

But apparently it's easier than being red.  Is this the saddest thing you've ever seen?

Here it is mid-September, and we're still crossing our fingers.  With rain in the forecast for the next four days, it is worrisome though. 

This was the first time I purchased good-sized starts for my garden.  I've tried growing my own starts without a lot of success.  They didn't harden over well, and so they were pretty spindly when we planted them.  I tried for two years to grow them from seeds sewn into the soil.  All I can say about that is, "Ha!"  Our home is at 1,400 feet.  With an already shortened growing season just by virtue of living near Portland, we have an even shorter growing season because of our elevation. 

When I bought these starts at the Portland Farmer's Market, they were in tiny little peat pots, and they were about 8 inches tall.  The plan was to put them in the ground around mid-May, which is when it usually starts to warm up.  But then, we had an unusually wet spring.  We weren't able to get them into the ground until the end of June!  By then, they'd grown to about three feet and they were already blooming.  I'd had to repot them when they started looking ridiculous in the tiny pots they were in.  (Sigh.)

And so here we are, mid-September, and they're still green as grass.  I am so hoping to be able to can some spaghetti sauce this year.  I even planted several special sauce varieties that are supposed to be meatier and with fewer seeds. 

But as you can see, they too are green as can be.  There is hope, however.  I saw a few that were beginning to turn orange.  And I picked these mostly cherry tomatoes and carried them up to the house in my shirt along with a handful of green beans.  Literally, a handful. 

Ordinarily, I'd have canned a ton of beans by now.  As it is, we're hoping to get enough for one meal.  I've had worse gardens before, but this is definitely in the top two.

On a brighter note (no pun intended), I spent some time in the greenhouse this morning.  My basil plant is looking bushy and healthy, and that is a positive change. The ones I've tried to grow in my greenhouse window have always remained puny and eventually died.  I think I will grow some more herbs in the greenhouse.  I have a big herb garden, but some of the herbs do not do well in the winter.  They always come back in the spring, but during the winter I'm forced to buy fresh herbs if I want them.  And they are criminally expensive.  We put a 55 gallon drum filled with water in there.  We think we can fit three more.  Their purpose is to provide more mass to the greenhouse.  They should warm up and help keep things warm over night.  We'll still have to do some heating, but this should cut down on it at least some of the cost and energy usage.
 
The windmill is churning away too, and that will cut our power bills some.  There's a new program where they pay us something like 65 cents for every kilowatt hour we generate.  But we learned yesterday that we are taxed on that, just like income.  That will cut our savings to about 45 cents for every kilowatt hour generated.  It's nothing to sneeze at, but it does sort of seem like they're getting us both coming and going.  Oh well.  Such is life.  Death and taxes right?  And cats.