Yesterday a frost warning flashed on my phone! Thank goodness for modern conveniences like weather applications; I’ve been so busy reacting to our pseudo Indian Summer that I’ve neglected to notice that it’s almost November. I guess it’s time to say farewell to our summer veggies (oh, how I love the mild weather here in California!) and get ready for the first frost.

So we headed out in our pajamas before bedtime to gather up all the ripe tomatoes and zucchini, and to then wrap up the potatoes in a frost cover. (Keeping our fingers crossed they’ll make it!)

We’re leaving dozens of green tomatoes on the plants, chard, lettuce and carrots in the ground, and several baby zucchini, still too small to pick.

We wonder, “Will it frost tonight? Will the frost cover insulate the potatoes well enough?” We shall see.

What we know for certain is that fall is here and winter is on its way.

I’m already planning out where I’ll plant the kale.

I set out to find a small, kid-sized backpack that was BPA free, Phthalate free, and PVC free. Sounds like a tall order in this day and age, right?!

Well, I stumbled on a fantastic, eco-groovy backpack perfect for toddlers:

Zoo Packs: Little Kid Backpacks by Skip Hop

My favorite part? They are sized for toddlers so that actually fit my two year old. She doesn’t look like she’s about to fall over backwards when it’s stuffed full. It’s not so heavy or bulky that she’s uncomfortable when wearing it.

My daughter’s favorite part? She can fill it up with her stuff and it’s her special bag. She wants us to bring it everywhere.

And the bag comes in other animals too!

They’re not super expensive and I think they’re adorable. Learn more.

As often as I talk about living in wine country, I realize that I haven’t posted many photos showing you that we do, in fact, live in wine country.

Time to rectify the situation:

I snapped these photos about a mile from our house on the way to the grocery store. Not your typical sight near your local mom and pop store, I know.

The grapevine leaves are just starting to change colors despite the 80 degree weather as of late. In another few weeks the leaves will be yellow and then wither and drop off, as close as we get to the changing of the seasons here and the brilliance of fall.

And the view from our house:

Notice the flecks of green in the hills? More grapevines.

See?! We live in wine country. Love the beauty and open space that surrounds us.

We’re feeling West County to the core.

It may be the end of September, but the weather has finally gotten HOT and our garden is responding! Flowers blooming, vegetables growing and ripening, weeds taking over the place…

First some pictures of the flowers and then a quick video tour of our itty bitty yard bursting with plants.

Before I give you a tour of our garden this year, let me remind you of what our yard looked like last year when we moved in (more info here):

Here it is now, a year and half later:

Movie: Garden Tour from Carrie on Vimeo.

(Sorry if I sound a bit breathless. I had a cold while filming, which we’ll now remember forever. Sigh.)

This weekend at our neighborhood street fair, we saw recycling, trash and compost bins with these fantastic signs and I started thinking about how lucky we are to be able to recycle so many things in our curbside bins. I think I often take it for granted how green our county is! (Shame on me!)

We can recycle a number of things that you typically can’t recycle in other parts of the country including all plastic types, shredded paper, laundry baskets, lawn furniture, plastic toys, bubble wrap, and household electronics such as cell phones, answering machines, stereos, and home printers.

Yes, lawn furniture and stereos. It boggles the mind.

And we don’t need to sort our recycling! Perfect for busy mothers.

Our trash pickup also includes a compost bin that gets collected weekly. In our yard debris/compost bins we can compost tea bags, bread, vegetables, fruits, pasta and rice, eggshells, wood ashe, and yard clippings.

(While this is incredibly convenient, the down side is that we don’t have our own compost pile that we could use to enrich our garden. We end up buying compost instead and that’s a of a financial bummer.)

And in true California fashion, a keen reminder that our trash doesn’t really go away. Evidently we’re all about laying environmental guilt on you. Sigh.

Sorry about that.

Today, being Friday, we did something new. After weeding, removing less-than-beloved plants, enriching and turning over the soil (all activities most certainly considered to be OLD), we planted bulbs.

Evidently Spritzer-Leyba’s are not ones for planting ordinary things like daffodils or crocuses. Miss Leyba and I had to choose the three feet tall giant purple allium.

They will look like this:

(photos from flickr)

I know, they are gorgeous, gigantic and insane!

I desperately want them to transform the front garden and add a giant burst of color. I think this should do it! (Fingers crossed!)

I just can’t believe we have to wait six months to see if we planted them upside down… ;)

To refresh your memory, here’s what our garden looked like a month ago when we planted the fall veggies:

We used lots of composted manure mixed into the soil and planted organic veggie starts/seeds from our neighborhood nursery (chard, two types of lettuce, carrots) and cupboard (purple potatoes that sprouted). We then covered the ground with mulch to help retain moisture and heat.

And here is it today, not quite four weeks later:

Hello, leafy green vegetables!

I find it hard to believe that it’s grown so much in such a short period of time! Our veggies have easily tripled their size and we’ve been busy harvesting too!

We still have around a hundred green tomatoes (because of our cool summer), but everything else is growing beautifully.

Once we get tired of the lettuce or give up on the tomatoes, I’m pulling them out and planting kale. Stay tuned!