The weather is gorgeous right now.  It's about 60 degrees and sunny, crystal blue skies.  It's days like this that make me absolutely love fall. 

Today I'm wrangling Thing 2 into helping me bring in the rest of the apples.  I took a turn around the garden just now, to see what's left to harvest.  It looks like a deer ate a bunch of my carrots, based on the hoof prints in the carrot bed.  There are quite a few holes where the carrots should be.  There are beets that need to be harvested/eaten.  I need to find some recipes to use them up creatively, since my family seems to have an aversion to beets.  Not that they've had them that much, and when they're snuck into something, like a salad, they say "Mmm.  What's this stuff?"  Anyway, the good apples need to come in, the bad ones composted.  I should've done it sooner, since we had this good stretch of weather, and it would've been best to get a fall coat of fungicide on the trees.  Well, I'll be ready for the next day of dry weather.

Other things in the garden include scallions.  They'll survive the winter, and it's nice to not have to pay a buck every time I want a few scallions in something.  I also have some parsnips.  They didn't really get going until the fall rains came.  I'm not sure if that's because they were too close to the apple tree, or if that's just how they grow.  Next time we have beef stew, one will get tossed in the pot.  The fall planting of spinach was a disaster.  It just didn't grow. 

I'm going to get a soil test done early next year.  Frankly, I'm tired of things not growing, so it's time to figure out what's going on.