Changing Plans

Fall is slowly creeping in here in Virginia, little by little.   The sunset is noticeably earlier now than it was a few weeks ago, which saddens me because I often work late and I enjoyed having a bit of daylight to accompany me home.  It is no longer light out when I get up for work in the mornings, either, which make rising a bit tougher.  However, the temperatures are starting to mellow just a smidgen, from the 80's and 90's to the 70's and 80's.  One day last week it was in the fifties overnight!

The change of seasons has been accompanied by less daylight for the garden, and a recognition that it is time to start planting some cooler season crops.  We have some tiny broccoli seedlings growing - hopefully I can do a better job of keeping the slugs off this time.

 This weekend my squash seeds arrived in the mail (yay!) and today I planted some acorn squash.  It's late to be planting it since it takes 3 months to mature, but between the fact that we're doing raised bed gardening and the hoop houses that will be over all of the beds, we should be able to pull off 3-season or 4-season gardening, so hopefully we'll get some acorn squash this fall and winter.

The tomatoes are still hanging in there.  Nick went through the main tomato bed this week and pulled out all of the plants suffering from a severe fungal infection, and then stripped the diseased leaves off of partially affected plants to slow it down, since it spreads vertically and horizontally.  So we now have a sparse bed of healthy-looking tomato plants.  Still have a serious stinkbug problem, but they haven't done much to the newer tomato plants and some of those are looking happy.  Case in point, the black krim on the right, which has some gorgeous fruits!  I am concerned that it's only a matter of time before the hundreds of stinkbugs we are fighting realize they are there, though.  Never thought I'd wish that the stinkbugs would come inside the house instead of staying outside, but at least indoors they don't do any harm.

Along with changes to the garden came changes to my weekend plans.  I had originally thought to spend the weekend redoing the front walkway, but after pricing it out I realized that my budget for the month was not going to cover that.  However, I did have enough to buy a gallon of paint in Benjamin Moore's Wickham Grey, so I spent the weekend repainting the dining room instead.  Friday was spackle/sand/tape day, and Saturday was the actual painting day.  It looks pretty good, if I say so myself!

Before

After

The light gray is a soothing, pretty color.  Depending on the time of day and the exterior sunlight, sometimes it looks a little blue or even green.  Nick especially loves it.  It's the same color that the hall has been painted, so the rooms flow nicely together.  Eventually I'd like to upgrade the room with a chair rail, and paint the bottom 1/3 or so of the wall a brighter color to punch it up a little bit.  Perhaps one of these?

Time will tell!  I actually did purchase a small sample jar of Hawthorne Yellow to put up on the wall, but apparently I left it on the edge of a counter and our pup took the term "sample" literally:

Oh well.  Live and learn!  At least it was only a small jar of paint.  Plus, he didn't actually consume much (so no health hazard there), and he thoughtfully decided to spill it only on his dog bed and not on the couch or carpet.  Could have been so much worse.