Autumn, You Tease!

When it’s been so hot and even miserable, a hint of cooler temperatures is a cause for celebration. Cooler temps showed up in the weather reports and you could feel hints in the air. I excitedly pulled out my flannel sheets a week ago.

Autumn is teasing me of course because this week we will still see daytime temps in the 90s and our overnights are still hanging onto the 60s.

Besides the temperature tease, there is evidence of the trees changing. Slight hints of color here and there. Sadly, it is too early for us to get to this view:

This was taken in November 2023 when our Quaking Aspen showed off it’s golden colors. Today it’s still green!

I did spot some autumn colors along a forest walkway a few days ago. Just small hints of red and orange sprinkled along an otherwise greenery lined trail.

What starts as summer ends and autumn ramps up? Harvesting!

Well harvest season is well underway in this area. Traffic reports around here consist of “today watch out for farm equipment movements slowing down everyone heading south.” Which is such a nice change from the 8 lane freeway accident prone area we were living in.

Here we are harvesting our first tomatoes.

My committment was to only experiment with 1 plant while we are building the shouse. We didn’t need to be spending too much time on the yard this year. One day in May, I carted home 2 different plants.

Only 1 of the 2 produced any real fruit. We had a 50% success rate.

Here’s what they looked like after I got them into larger pots and fed them well. Eventually I moved them outside and out of the pots. They took up a spot near some fruit trees.

One day I walked past and it was bursting with green fruit. Now it is looking even more awesome. As summer ends and Autumn begins, let the tomatoes ripen.

Last May, I selected my little plants from Home Depot. I never looked up the variety and just recall reading they would be small. That made them seem simple to grow especially if I had to keep them in a container. At the time I wasn’t certain I’d make an outside spot for them or they’d remain in containers all summer.

One plant only produced only a few turds and was a grape tomato variety called Grape Tami G. The beauty above is a compact roma called Little Napoli. It is a compact, determinate producer of small oval roma and is meant for containers! It stayed compact even when I transplanted it in the ground, but produced a nice bounty for the 1st round. I left many green fruit on it and hope round 2 ripens before it’s too cold.

Autumn can tease me all it wants, I’ll have roasted tomato soup ready to go.

What do you appreciate about leaving summer behind and hopping into cooler Autumn? Or depending on where you are, leaving Spring behind and hopping into Summer?

About the Photo Challenge

A weekly themed photo challenge hosted by Terri. Check out her Blog and come back to visit for more SundayStills and traveling posts!

More Sunday Still Posts

Thanks for visiting our travel blog and I hope you enjoyed finding the #SundayStills Challenge. You can join the weekly challenge by visiting our hosts blog Second Wind Leisure. and checking out Terri’s post for this week, Is It Autumn Yet or Spring?