Sandhills & geese amidst impending storm

The sandhill cranes and Canada geese have been gathering the past few weeks in the cut barley field west of our house. I like pretending they're gearing up for a mass liftoff in advance of tomorrow & Thursday's coming storm. The storm's initial clouds and darkness are hovering above the mountains in the image.
Lots of sandhill cranes have been circling overhead on a daily basis and can be seen & heard frequently. I'd guess they'd be heading south soon; maybe this storm will push them a little more.

We put bird feeders out two weeks ago and have been attracting the usual feathered critters - gold finches, sparrows, red-headed blackbirds. The squirrels are back too now, since they have food to try to obtain. Mountain chickadees are coming to the suet as well.

Not so fast with the brusselsprouts.....

I'm still able to squeeze a few more brusselsprouts out of my plants - picked probably about a pound or so today. I think the slight purple hue that some of the little sprouts have is due to the frosty temperatures we've had some nights.

We got a great moisture-filled snowfall & rain storm a few days ago - over 1.25" of moisture sank into the dry-as-bone ground. All of the snow still hasn't melted.

Leaves are now off the trees; they were helped by the wet snow. I've raked up most of them & stored them in my several leaf bins, ready to be used for the next compost session!

One winter or late fall task is to move three of my raised beds in the vegetable garden away from the 6'-high-tall privacy fence that separates my garden from the neighbor to the south. The fence keeps those three raised beds snow covered and full of cold or frozen soil into late April & early May, which is too late when I could be planting seeds/lings in them. Moving them means I'll have to rearrange my drip irrigation tubing that spends the summer out in the garden.

Onions

Finally harvested all of the remaining onions, carrots, and brusselsprouts. I ended up with about three milk crates (size to the left) full of Walla Walla onions. Some were as big as an infants' head. I learned after the fact that Walla Wallas are not good storage onions, so have given some away, may dry a bunch, and will try to use the rest.
My carrots taste great - just the way carrots should taste. Their appearance may be a bit off-putting (little spurs jutting out, pimples, more) but their flavor is such genuine CARROT.
For next year I'll have to rethink growing brusselsprouts - cabbageworms are such a pain, and it's essential to keep after them continuously to avoid holes and little worms burrowed into the sprouts. They don't seem quite as drawn to cabbages, so maybe I'll just grow a few of those next summer and give b-sprouts a rest for a year.
I ordered a shipment of planting garlic that should be arriving soon; ordered more than last year. This year's garlic turned out very well, just not enough.
I suspect I will change what I plant next year quite a bit. I also need to move all of my raised beds away from the 6'-tall privacy fence that shades them from the south; the soil in those beds stays cold too long, because it's out of the sun into the growing season. Should have thought of that when I set them up......

Harvest & storage of carrots

Last year I dug a shallow hole out in the dirt sunroom floor in which to store some carrots. It bore no resemblance to a root cellar, though that was what I was striving for. What a joke. This year I'm trying something else. My Organic Gardening Encyclopedia (Rodale Press) recommends storing carrots in bins or boxes, and layering them in peat moss, then covering with straw. So I'm trying that. I haven't harvested all my carrots & onions yet, but the carrots I've dug up so far are going in the bin. Then I'll either store it in the cold spare room inside the house, or keep it out in the garage. As for the onions - since I opted to grow Walla Wallas, and they're not a great storing variety, I've been giving some away. The additional 20-30 I have I'll try to use up, or will chop them up and dehydrate.

I haven't come across the monarch chrysalises yet; I assume they've gone to that stage since the caterpillars disappeared a few weeks ago. Guess they could have been munched by a bird.

I was getting intermittent raspberries through last weekend, but no more.

Signs of autumn

I heard my first autumn sandhill crane call yesterday. Tonight we're due to have our first hard frost; I had erroneously thought it was last night (Sunday, not Monday), so yesterday harvested tomatoes & beans, and then later in the evening covered as much as I could in hopes of staving off the effects of the cold. But as it's now only 39 degrees (5:30 AM Monday), looks like frost won't occur today anyway.
Leaves are continuing to turn golden yellow, and the squirrels have been going after the crabapples which are covering the lawn.
I purchased two new shrubs recently (Ninebark and Rabbitbrush) at a great price. In preparation for planting the Ninebark, I was digging out more of the turf in the frontyard. For the second time this season I punctured the irrigation line---DANG. Now I have to hold off until I get the right part to fix it. I now consider myself to be an expert in irrigation line repair.
The monarch larva appear to be gone; if I were to look in the vicinity I could probably find their cocoons. Way too late for them to survive when/if they come out.

HUGE ripe raspberry

I planted everbearing raspberries in a new location last year, and decided they really liked their location, as the canes grew at least three feet over the summer. A couple of the canes are bowed nearly to the ground with the weight of berries. I was out in the vicinity of the patch this evening picking up the ever-present dog poop, and noticed a huge red raspberry, ripe for the taking! This is the biggest one I've gotten off any of my raspberry plants. I don't know if the remaining berries will ripen before frost hits.
High Country Gardens is now offering various fruit plants for sale and claim theirs will produce before frost.

More Monarch caterpillars found

There are three caterpillars that I've found, and since they're kind of hard to find, more could be found. And they don't stay put - one night they'll be on one milkweed, so I mark that one with a stake so I can easily find the caterpillar later. Then I come back a day or two later and look for the critter, and it's moved to a completely different plant. Don't know why they do that.

The little guy to the right is the smallest; originally it was up on the leaves of a full-grown plant, then the next day when I returned, it was on a very small, juvenile milkweed plant. I don't know if it fell from the higher plant, or if the leaves of the larger, older milkweed were too tough for a new, young caterpillar, so it voluntarily moved.

The caterpillar to the left is one of the two bigger ones. Last night when I went out to look for all three of them, I was only able to find two. They can be difficult to spot since they generally stay on the underside of the leaves. I suspect, too, that a bird would be excited about finding one of these tasty morsels.