20 September 2026

Brian Bilbrey September 20, 2026

Fall Chill

Living room scene: pellet stove alight in background, dog in foreground licking her nose. — *Dog photobombing the pellet stove*

We hit "meteorological fall" at the beginning of the month. A couple of weeks ago, we hit "Brian fall", which is, for me, the first overnight low temperature below 50°F. But it's been staying fairly chilly out, and the low temps inside the house have been hitting 65, which I'm not fond of. So today I spun up the pellet stove on the main floor of the house for the first time this season. I expect that we're going to hit the first overnight in the 30's later this week.

Swimming Dog

Speaking of show-off dogs, we had a new event a couple of weeks ago. For context, we arrive at the reservoir (a pond, "the Res") at about the 2 mile point on our daily walk. By that time, Georgia is ready for a brief break and a cool-down. So she gets to go for a wade in the Res, on leash when there are people and dogs about, off leash when we're alone.

On that sunny day two and a half weeks ago, Georgia got to go out off leash. Usually she goes out deep enough that the water touches her chest, drinks some water, and stands there until she gets bored, then comes back out. On the day in question, while she was drinking some water, a fish swam past in front of her nose. Boom, she tried to pounce on that fish. Then chased it. Then started looking for, and finding, other small fish, mostly fingerlings, to chase and pounce upon. Before she knew what was happening, the ground dropped away from under her feet and she was swimming.

Back and white dog swimming in a pond — *Georgia on her first swim*

This was a red letter day. We'd been told that as a bully mix, she'd be unlikely to swim, since bully dogs are back-end heavy and don't swim well. Whoops. So she's having fun. But still with a purpose - trying to catch fish. I'm going to have to work on her recall, because she's ignoring me when I call her, if she wants to keep fishing.

Veggies

tomatoes and hot peppers in four bowls on stairs in the sunshine — *Third harvest*

Thursday was the third harvest from the small garden beds in the back yard. Shown in the picture above are two bowls full of tomatoes on the left, a colander full on habaneros upper right, and a colander full of jalapeño and serrano peppers on the lower right.

I'd pulled that amount of tomatoes out of the garden twice before. Those all went to making red sauce, most of which is frozen as is, but I used a few cups to make a pork sausage, beef, black and red bean chili.

This harvest ... well, I have far too many habanero plants. I might have mentioned that I thought I had one plant, but I in fact have five. Hmmm. So this batch all went to a chef I know a few minutes away in Farmingdale. The rest of the peppers have been minced and are ready for freezling, less what I gave to the salsa I made today.

Salsa in bowl on left, cutting board, tomatoes, and trimmings fill the picture. — *Today's salsa making*

Yep, salsa. So for the half-gallon or so of salsa/pico that I made, I used the following ingredients:

tomatoes - mostly run through the Cuisinart, with a few diced.
mixed minced jalapeño and serrano peppers, with a tiny bit of habanero.
one large yellow onion - half through the Cuisinart, half diced.
five medium cloves of garlic, a handful of cilantro - through the cuisinart.
about a teaspoon and a half of lime juice.
about a teaspoon of salt.

After making it up, I ended up adding another couple of tablespoons of minced hot peppers. I can still taste all the ingredients, but I'm left with a strong wash of spicy heat in the afterglow, so this is a perfect salsa for me (which is too hot for many folks).

I still have a couple of pounds of tomatoes from this batch. Wednesday upcoming might be last harvest day, as temps in the 30's are not great for veggies.