Potatoes, frost, winding down, and presentable housekeeping

This weekend, Partner and I dug up half our potato crop. I'm not sure how many, but Partner estimated about 100 potatoes. Mostly small, but several were HUGE. I mean seriously big, maybe six or eight inches in diameter. I don't know how they grew so big when most were tiny. These pictured are the usual shrimps.

I love winding down the garden at the end of the year. Well, not when it's raining: today, however, after a fierce frost (which actually hardly affected our garden at all), the sun shone and with Franklin snoring away at his mid-afternoon nap, I flung on my wellies and got digging. The street at the front of our house glittered with frost so I'm not sure how it missed our back garden, but what care I for details? It's November! It frosted! Even if it didn't kill my plants--I'm pulling them up anyway!

I dug up some gladiolas and a dahlia to overwinter (note to self: there are about a dozen more each of glads and dahlias to go), made a small dent in the Planet of the Nasturtiums, and planted a few tulip bulbs I'd divided from overcrowded stocks last spring. And planted out the last of the spring cabbages. Hooray!

I need to dig up the remainder of the potatoes; I really don't want to feed the slugs, after all. I think the celeriac ought to come up too, and any beets and carrots left. A few years ago, at the end of the season, we discovered mice eating the last of our carrots. Kind of put me off them. Oddly enough, they left our beets alone. When I was a kid I thought beets tasted like dirt. As an adult, I like them; they do still taste a bit like dirt, though.

For Thanksgiving we've invited Partner's parents to stay for the week. Having a baby has led to a sharp drop in housekeeping here, and I need to seriously organize if I want to be presentable next week when they arrive. My kitchen and living room stay moderately tidy--I clean the kitchen daily when Franklin either plays with food in his high chair or naps, and he crawls around while I tidy the living room during the day. The other rooms are more difficult at present. The only babyproofed room upstairs is his own, and with no gate at the top of the stairs: not so tidy upstairs. Better get on it, quick. A babyproofed house would be dreamy.

Speaking of babyproof: Partner caught Franklin eating dog food this weekend. No doubt it will be the first of many.