The last day we saw upper 80s was September 11, and I doubt those warm days are going to return. Thick wildfire smoke kept the temperatures down the following week, and now it is definitely feeling like autumn in north Idaho.
I am currently enjoying my third mini-retreat to my friends' non-motorhome. It's only a few miles from my house, but it is a wonderful place to enjoy solitude and think my own thoughts, uninterrupted. There is no running water in the RV, but there is a spigot nearby for filling jugs, and I have a fridge, a stove, electricity, and internet. It's like glorified camping, and I am quite content.
My posts about my previous retreats included pictures of the resident goats and horses, but the llama was always snooty and eluded me. This time I caught a photo of it before it had time to get out of range. It's not friendly.
Friday evening I enjoyed an impressive thunderstorm while in the RV. The rain pounded down most satisfyingly on the metal roof, and the flashes of lightning were close and spectacular. After the storm, however, the skies cleared off and I awoke to frost on my windshield. Hmm, that was not in the weather forecast! I wondered if my remaining tomato plants had survived. So I left my retreat spot for a few hours in the afternoon and went home to check out the garden. The RV is located in a frost-prone valley, but my garden was unscathed by recent frost. My cherry tomato plant was flopped over so badly I decided to prop it up just a few days ago. It is still producing little yellow tomatoes.
I picked 30# of tomatoes from four plants. I kept the three varieties separate, and the pieces of paper in the bins tell me which ones are supposed to be yellow, purple, or red when they ripen up, just in case I want to know. This makes a total of 92 pounds of tomatoes waiting to ripen up indoors. I hope enough of them ripen at once so I can make a batch of salsa. Thanks again to @generikat for providing the interesting variety of tomato starts in the spring!
This 14 ounce tomato is the purple variety. It looks as if three tomatoes somehow grew together in one big lump. I doubt that it will ripen properly, but one never knows.
To my surprise, there are still 7 gladiola spikes in my garden, and it looks as if they may get around to blooming yet! I wasn't sure they would accomplish that before the weather turned 'way too cold.
Last evening there was a frost warning on the weather forecast (a day late), but instead, we got fog. If you compare this photo to the llama photo, you can see the hills are missing. I took the photo two hours ago, and now the sun is breaking through and the fog is dissipating. It looks like it will be a sunny day after all. I need to go home this afternoon and do more work in the garden while the weather is nice. I love these mini-retreats, but sooner or later I always need to go home and resume my normal activities.
If you would like to read about my previous retreats, here are the links:
retreat number one
retreat number two