We had a late killing frost at night on October 18, a welcome month later than some years. As it was getting cold that afternoon I harvested the sweet and hot peppers, the only frost sensitive crops not yet put away. The sweet peppers filled four bushel baskets together weighing around 125 pounds. I ran out of time to pick individual fruit, so, with light from a headlamp, I cut whole hot pepper plants and placed more than 100 of them in four piles in the insulated back building and shut the door. We had only two plants worth of shishito peppers so they just went into my pocket. It took many hours over the next days to separate the 150 pounds of hot varieties from their stalks and leaves. Around half of both the sweet and hot peppers were fully ripe, with the rest green to partially colored.
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| A Box of Sweet Peppers Heading to a Friend |
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| From Top: Serrano, Alice's Favorite, Jalapeño, and Poblano Hot Peppers Left After Delivering 140 Pounds to a Food Pantry and Friends |
Frost also did in the dahlias and gladiolus and a week later we dug up the tubers/corms and put them in a dry place to prepare them for a long winters nap.
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| Light Colored Dahlias with Amaranth Leaning from the Left |
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| A Dahlia Arrangement |
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| Solid Red Dahlias with Cosmos in the Foreground |
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| Glad Corms in the Wheelbarrow, Dahlia Tubers in the Box |
Frost also hastened color change of maple trees and it took only a few days of wind and rain to send most of the leaves to the ground.
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| Maple Leaves Just Starting to Fall |
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| Four Days Later: Maple Leaves Falling Faster |
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| A Week Later: Few Maple Leaves Left on Tree |
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