Where'd this one come from?

I have been something of a Squash Nerd this year. I've always tried to grow squash but haven't usually been very successful. I've had trouble with germinating, and transplanting, and flowering, and pollinating, and ripening. Basically I've had trouble with just about every stage of a squash's development from seed packet to dinner plate.

But I've learned a thing or two along the way. Like the fact that squash don't take to being transplanted, and that even if I'm really excited about things growing in the springtime, the squash plants aren't necessarily as excited and won't grow until they're good and ready. So now I seed them directly into the garden, a few weeks later than I used to.

And I learned about male flowers and female flowers and the whole process of pollination. I still haven't figured out why one day there will only be male flowers, and the next day only female, but I suppose Mother Nature has the right to a few mysteries.

So this year, armed with my hard-won experience, I dosed the squash beds with a generous amount of fish compost (a splurge, but so worth it), waited until the weather warmed up before seeding, and checked on the progress of the plants day by day.

They began to flower about two weeks ago, and since then, every morning I have made the trek back to the vegetable garden to search out male flowers which I would pluck, strip of petals, and then carry around from bed to bed looking for female flowers to pollinate. And of course looking for signs of success from the previous days' pollinating ventures.

So when my zucchini plant produced its first zucchini I was thrilled. I cut it off the bush, carried it proudly in the house, sliced it and marinated it in a lovely vinaigrette, ate the whole thing in one sitting, and then began waiting for the next one.

Apparently a watched zucchini plant is something like a tea kettle, because it has since produced nothing. Some flowers, which I have faithfully pollinated, but every morning as I have looked under the big leaves for any sign of an impending zucchini, there has been nothing but disappointment.

Which is why I was a little surprised to find this yesterday.

Did it grow that big in one day? I don't think so. So where, exactly, was it hiding?

One day only

Today, for one day only, I have a perfect garden.

Today my week-long weeding and cleaning blitz came to a close. Today my big, strong, hockey-player student spread four cubic yards of bark mulch in the perennial garden while I followed along behind him tickling the mulch onto all the nooks and crannies.

Today there is not a weed to be seen. The edges are tidy and the paths are swept clean.

Today my student's mom, when she came to pick him up at the end of his shift, called my garden a Martha Stewart Garden.



Tomorrow there will be weeds. Tomorrow there will be more dried-up columbines ready to be cut back. Tomorrow I will wake up and find some disorder where today there is order. But today, for one day, everything is perfect.

And you know what? I'm looking forward to tomorrow.

To my surprise, I find the neatness and order of today's garden just a little unsatisfying. "Hallelujah!" Mother Nature and her angels are shouting, after five years of trying to cure me of my perfectionism. Well, I may be a slow learner, but I think I've finally got this lesson down. Finally I realize there's something to be said for the unpredictability of Mother Nature's version of a garden, for the unexpected odd bits that pop up to surprise you, for the asymmetry and wonkiness and messy bits. My orderly everything-matches-because-it's-just-been-mulched garden is a little . . . well, boring.

So this evening, for one evening only, I'll sit on the verandah and look out on perfection. And tomorrow I'll embrace a less tidy, more real garden, all the more beautiful for its imperfection.

Lilies

When I regained my sense of smell what I most looked forward to were lilacs. And sure enough, as soon as the lilacs bloomed, I spent days with my nose in the blossoms, sniffing up a dozen years worth of missed scent.



I think the only reason I didn't feel the same way about lilies is because they didn't form any part of the scented backdrop to my childhood. Who had lilies way back then? Nobody I knew. But I've got them now, and do they ever smell wonderful.

They smell wonderful when my nose is buried in them, but they also smell wonderful when I'm at the other end of the garden. Holy smokes, does that scent carry! Tonight while I was out watering some new transplants I kept sniffing my arm thinking it was my insect repellent I was smelling. But no, it was the lily gang hanging out in the shade of  the magnolia tree, throwing open their petals and saying "Come sniff!"

So I did.

Math equation of the day

1 uncovered straw bale 

+ 

14 chickens 

+ 

2 turned backs 

______________

= 1 big mess

Oxalis

Last year I was looking for something to plant in the old washing machine tub parked by the pond. I had been filling it with annuals but decided to switch to a perennial because hey, who doesn't like less work? So I went hunting for something with the right scale for the tub, that could handle the part sun, part dappled shade, dry unless I remember to water it conditions. Usually, when I go to the garden store with a list of requirements in hand, I end up getting sucked in by the first pretty thing I see. In this case, it was a picture, because I bought bulbs.

Oxalis deppei is what I came home with. Then I did a Google search and found out how many people battle invasive oxalis in their lawns and garden beds and I thanked my lucky stars that I was planting in a container, not a bed, at a good distance from any of the perennial beds. And I reasoned that since it is hardy only to Zone 7 (which we are only in a good year) any problems would be solved with a good dose of winter.

It did well last year, filling the tub with its two-colour shamrock leaves and pink flowers, and so I was curious this spring whether it would return. It did, not quite as luxuriantly, but it slowly filled out and now it is blooming. Beautifully.

Chicken pickin'

I think it's past time for an update from the Mucky Boots chickie front. Not only do we have the sixteen Black Australorp chicks (now ten weeks old, I think - I can never keep track), we now have eighteen Buff Orpington and eighteen Welsummer chicks, all hatched right here. In case you're keeping track, that's 52 chicks. Wowza.

First the Australorps. They are now living in the coop, in a separate enclosure from Hector and the Hens but hanging out when them during the day. We continue to have trouble with our local racoons and eagles, so when one of us isn't around the teenagers are confined to the chicken yard, lounging on the roost...



... but when Kim makes an appearance they stop whatever they're doing and run to her.

It took only a couple of days to teach them how to come when called and how to put themselves to bed, in the right enclosure, at night. The other day an eagle flew low over the area where they free range and they all bolted immediately for the coop, unlike some of the grown ups who stayed outside to see what was going on. They are easily the sweetest, smartest and best behaved bunch of chicks we have ever had.

Which leads us to the babies Buffs, easily the worst bunch of troublemakers we have had. More about that later. 

Here are the Baby Bunch at a few days old. The Welsummers are another heritage breed, smaller than the Buffs and the Australorps. They lay a large, terra-cotta coloured egg, and are known for their appearance on the Kellogg's Corn Flakes box. Holy moley, are they cute, racing stripes and all.

Kim built a new brooder box for the Baby Bunch, since we've never had so many chicks at once before. It's huge, about four feet by six feet, and cleverly made of plywood panels zip-tied together so it's easy to break down and store once we're finished with it. (Yes, you really can construct anything with duct tape and zip ties...).

Kim has been experimenting with a new watering system - she's fed up with rambunctious chicks flicking litter into the regular waterers, so she bought some nipples from a local dealer and used some PVC pipe (note the zip-ties) and a big jug on an elevated stand to gravity feed the water. It works like a hamster waterer: the chicks jiggle the nipple with their beaks and a few drops of water come out. They took to it like a charm.

The Baby Bunch are now three weeks old, and are already spending the day in the chicken tractor eating bugs and grass. We love the Welsummers: they're curious and calm and beautiful to boot.

The Buffs - they're another story. About a week ago Kim noticed one of the Buffs had a bloody tail and realized there was some feather picking going on. With chicks this usually arises when the tail feathers start to come in - the quill part is blood-rich and looks darker than the surrounding skin or downy fluff, and as any chicken farmer knows, the sight of blood can throw an otherwise civilized chicken flock into a cannibalistic blood frenzy. Fortunately Kim was right there when the frenzy started, and she was able to whisk the victim to safety. But as she continued to watch she realized the feather picking was more widespread, and so  the Mucky Boots Anti-Pick Campaign was launched.

Feather picking is something you want to nip in the bud as fast as you can. Not only can the chicks do serious damage to each other, it can be a habit that, once established, is very hard to break. So all other projects came to a screeching halt while Kim got on the case.

After a few phone calls and some internet research Kim went to our local farm store and bought some Stop Pick, which is a cayenne-based ointment you dab onto the areas being picked. The red colour attracts the attention of the pickers, but one taste is supposed to discourage them from continuing. And it worked, sort of. The frenzy definitely stopped, but the picking didn't entirely cease.

For the next few days Kim was parked beside the brooder, watching to see who the culprits were and then banding them, so she could keep track. She alternately separated the chicks being picked and the pickers, trying to see which worked best, and finally settled on keeping the pickers away from the rest of the flock. But they needed to be separated from each other, too, and she didn't have enough small cages. So she built some, using plastic tubbies, hardware cloth and (you guessed it) zip ties.

And the Mucky Boots Solitary Confinement Reform School for Pickin' Chickens was born.

There are currently four residents - all Buffs of course - and the problem appears to have ceased. Kim has also switched to a red light bulb in the brooder (to camouflage pick-worthy areas) and has attached pockets made of half-inch hardware cloth to the sides of the brooder that she fills with kale and other greens, to give the chicks something to pick and pull at other than each other. And she made the decision to get the chicks out into the tractor sooner than she might have otherwise, to keep them distracted and busy and make sure they're too tired at the end of the day to resort to bad behaviour. Can you tell she used to be a teacher?

We have never had this problem before, and this is the fifth or sixth batch of chicks we have brooded under similar conditions. Our best guess was that we gave them too much light (by way of the heat lamps that stayed on all night), which was part of the reason Kim switched to a red bulb (and why we spent an hour tacking tar paper over all the windows of the workshop to block the light, causing our neighbours to wonder if we were launching a grow op). Fortunately the weather is warm enough now that the workshop is warm enough through the night for the partially-feathered chicks, so even the red bulb gets turned off for nine hours of dark sleeping time.

And how have the Welsummers done through all this drama? They have minded their own business, committing nary a pick themselves.

Postscript: Kim wanted me to say that it's not all the Buffs causing problems, just four of them. Four troublesome chicks giving their hatch mates a bad name. But if there's anyone who can help them along the reform path back to the sweet and amusing Buff breed we know, it's Kim.

When is a vegetable garden not a vegetable garden?

When it's a flower garden, of course.

When we first moved to Mucky Boots I was a little impatient with all the flowers the previous owners had planted in the vegetable garden. Yarrow, poppies, roses, lavender, butterfly bushes, daisies. What the heck were they all doing there, I wondered. Sure, they were pretty, but I was set on being a practical, productive Serious Vegetable Gardener, and they were taking up valuable real estate.

After a year or two, once I had learned a thing or two, I realized all those flowers were attracting the pollinators to the garden. I had them to thank for all the peas, beans, tomatoes, squash, melons and cucumbers we ate. So my impatience turned into appreciation for the job the flowers were doing.

Now I don't care about what sort of function those flowers perform: I'm in love with how beautiful they are, and that's enough for me. Beauty is enough. What a revelation.

My herb bed is full of borage volunteers. I'm amazed they're there, because I haven't planted any in the vegetable garden for a couple of years.

The mallow growing in the same bed is in its third year of self seeding. I don't have to do any work at all (other than recognizing a mallow seedling when I see one, so I don't weed it out by mistake) and look at what I am given.

Remember what I said about having second thoughts about giving poppies a free ride and retracting my offer to let them grow wherever they are inclined to? Well I'm like the Fiddler on the Roof, thinking it out again, because I'm back to whole hearted infatuation. These poppies (and their friends the calendula) have made themselves at home in a bed that's supposed to belong to three blueberry bushes. I check periodically on the blueberries, to make sure they're not being smothered. They aren't - they're being beautifully adorned instead.

There are three rose plants in the vegetable garden. They mystify me. I thought roses were supposed to be fussy, demanding plants requiring dedicated care. All I do is hack them back in the fall, and they repay me by  looking beautiful all summer.

This all signals a change in how I view my vegetable garden. Our first growing season I was so focused on squirrelling food away Kim could barely get a few strawberries in her mouth before I was yanking them away to freeze for the winter. I canned and pickled and froze, and realized that while it was nice to have that food in storage, there are only so many pickles one can eat, and frozen vegetables are always a poor second compared with fresh. So I have gradually relaxed about preserving food and focused instead on eating as much fresh from the garden as we can, and growing vegetables that can either overwinter in the garden (like carrots, beets, and hardy greens) or store well (like onions and garlic). All of which means the pressure to grow as much as possible has been eased, so there is more room in my garden for all those beautiful flowers.

And there's more room in my heart, too. That's a Mucky Boots miracle.

Goodbye Gump

We said a difficult goodbye to Gump yesterday. Gump was our two-year-old, hatched right here Buff Orpington rooster, and our hearts are heavy.

Gump was special right from the start, in an endearingly odd kind of way. He was part of a hatch that was predominantly cockerels, and even though he was the biggest of the bunch he was the lowest on the pecking order. He was never part of the flock - he would wander his own way, doing his own thing in a gentle, clumsy, semi-clued-out kind of way. The other chickens would come running for scratch at the end of the day but Gump would only look over, mildly curious, and wander off into the bushes. We worried about Gump.

Once Gump and three of his young flock mates refused to come into the coop for the night. We're not sure if something spooked them or if they just wanted a camp out, but they lodged themselves into a thick stand of prickly bushes that we couldn't get into. And then, once night fell, there was no budging them. In the morning we were minus one pullet and Gump was missing a few tail feathers, but no matter how nicely we asked to hear the story of their adventure, nobody was talking.

When it came time to pick the cockerel who would be given charge of the flock we chose Gump. By that time it was clear the hens in the flock loved him: where Gump went so did they. They liked his gentle, protective ways, and so did we, and Gump proved we made a good choice. He was a big, gentle, slightly uncoordinated giant, and he took his rooster duties seriously. He did a great "I'm the rooster" dance (if you've never seen it, the rooster drops one wing and dances around the hen in a circle), he showed the hens good places to get food and lay eggs, and he kept a watchful eye out for overhead predators.

In recent months, however, one roosterly duty proved difficult for him: sex. Always a bit clumsy, he became increasingly lame, which meant he wasn't so good at mounting the hens. As a consequence, the fertility of our eggs began to suffer, and since Kim does a brisk business with hatching eggs through the spring, this was a problem. We began to look for a replacement rooster, but we were clear that Gump would stay with us no matter what.

It didn't work out that way. Even though we could find no reason for his lameness, it became more and more difficult for Gump to get around, to the point where he spent most of his day sitting down. We didn't even want to visit him in the chicken yard, because when he saw one of us he would struggle painfully to his feet to do the rooster dance. And so we finally made the decision to put him down.

We're still not prepared to do this ourselves, and so we took him to our local slaughterhouse. And today Kim took his carcass to a local food kitchen, where one of the diners said "Oh good, chicken soup."

Gump was good from beginning to end. Goodbye, Gump.

Holy cable batman

No, I don't have a stomach ache - I'm just holding the sweater closed until a nice shawl pin finds its way into my life.

I went a little crazy after I finished my last sweater. I was so happy to have finally made up my mind about a pattern, and found a way to finish the steeked edges. So right away I plunged into another project...a ridiculously challenging one: Opposite Pole, created by Joji Locatelli. There were nine million things that made this a tough one for me: provisional cast ons, two complicated cable and braid charts with different numbers of rows, short rows galore, and learning how to graft stitches. 

I have never seen a sweater constructed in such a way. I won't bore you with all the details, except to say that is was by far the most complicated thing I have ever knit. Basically the rectangular panel in the centre of the photo is knit first, then the rest is knit in a big circle all the way around the outside, leaving holes for the arms which are then picked up and knit. Thinking methodically and not freaking out were what got me through.

It was the very last thing I had to do that I'm a little disappointed in: grafting a run of stitches, in this case a complicated run containing garter, stockinette and rib stitches. I watched about a dozen youtube videos on grafting, and learned that the procedure is different depending on not only what kind of stitch you have currently (knit or purl) but also which stitch comes next. On top of that, there was no way to get the cable and braid patterns to meet up exactly once I'd made my way around the circle - the pattern warned me not even to try. The end result is that there is an awkward looking line down the centre of the back collar that I'm not happy with. I tried! I picked it out and started again a few times, and this was the best I could make it look. Which is too bad, set off against the beautiful back panel.

I already have my next project picked out: a very simple cardigan for Kim, in a colour called Cilantro Heather. The whole thing is knit in stockinette stitch. What a relief.

Third child syndrome

You know how it is: the family photo albums are full of pictures of the first child. The second child not so much. And the third child? The third child is lucky even to be noticed.

It's like that with batches of chicks. I'm not even sure which batch we're on now - I have lost count - but the third child syndrome is full blown because I haven't even mentioned the current brood, let alone made them the subject of their own post. So here they are, the most recent additions to the Mucky Boots Flock: sixteen healthy, pooping, scratching, cheeping, almost-seven-week-old Black Australorps.

Right now they sleep in two brooder boxes (that's one of them in the photo at the top of the post) in the workshop, but during the day Kim and I ferry them out to the chicken tractor which is set up right now in the orchard. They're learning to eat bugs and grass, and experiencing sunshine, bird calls and even a bit of rain (although they have plenty of protection). The orchard is where the grown up Australorps pasture, and they have all been getting acquainted through the chicken wire of the tractor. Hector, the patriarch, is particularly interested in the little ones, as is the smallest hen, who would rather keep an eye on the youngsters than head back to the coop for an afternoon treat of scratch.

One of the funniest moments of every day is when the chicks get released from the brooder box into the chicken tractor. They required an awful lot of coaxing the first time, but now they can't wait to be set loose.

I think that's the chickie equivalent of "Wheeeeee!"

It's about those poppies

You know how much I love the poppies growing here at Mucky Boots. I love them so much I have written at least a dozen posts about them. I have taken photos, and collected seeds to send to all my friends. I have given them names: the Creamsicle, the San Pellegrino, the Ballet Tutu, and the Bordello. I have even declared that when it comes to volunteers, poppies get a free ride, no matter where they pop up.

I think the poppies must have read that post and taken it as permission to embark on a campaign for world domination, because this year the poppies are everywhere.

Here are some examples. First we have poppies with cilantro, in the photo above, and then poppies with concord grape...



... poppies with artichoke...



...poppies with blueberry...



...and finally poppies with raspberry.

 

If all those photos just look like a mass of green foliage, that's exactly my point. Everything else is being buried. Compounding the problem is the fact that I didn't get around to staking and tying up the big heavy poppies this spring, so they are sprawling over everything in their vicinity.

I have come to the conclusion that it may be possible, in fact, to have too much of a good thing.

Hostas: a non-gardener's best friend

Continuing on with the theme of gardening without actually gardening, I have decided my best friend in the perennial beds is the humble hosta.

I admit to having moved to Mucky Boots with a prejudice against hostas in tow. It dates back to the first house Kim and I had, a little place in Toronto with a postage-stamp backyard filled with hostas. I remember them as being slimy and slug infested, and as my introduction to gardening they creeped me out.



So when we got here and I saw all the hostas in the perennial beds I was disappointed. How stupid could I be? Because not only do hostas come in a huge variety of colours and sizes, and fill out a bed in a mounding, lush way, they require nothing of me except a few minutes to clean them up at the end of the fall. They're supposed to be shade lovers, but the ones we've got here seem to tolerate part sun, full sun, moist soil, dry soil, and everything in between.

Just look at that bed: variegated hostas and finer-leaved yellow hostas in the foreground, and an enormous green hosta in the background.  If you hunkered down and looked underneath you would find some of my arch-nemesis the creeping bellflower, but the hostas do such a good job of staking their territory the bellflower never seems to get past the ground cover stage.

And although I hesitate to put this in writing (because as soon as I do I'll be proved wrong) we don't seem to have a problem with slugs. And it's not like we don't have slugs here - look at this sucker, for instance. 

But they don't seem to trouble with the hostas. In fact the only thing that does any damage is an occasional deer that comes to chomp off the flower spikes.

And here's another good thing: hostas give you more hostas. Not only do they tolerate being divided, they like it. Last fall Kim and I went on a hosta-dividing spree and now we have even more hostas doing their lovely thing without a bit of input from me. 

That's a bit of a lopsided friendship: I badmouth the plant and it responds by giving me things. I'm trying not to feel too bad. I'm just trying to mend my ways.

How to garden without gardening

I have been laid up with a sore knee all spring. For a while I was limping along, but for the last month it's been bad enough I've been on crutches or using a cane but mostly parked on my butt. The vegetable garden has been my priority on the days when I can get around a little, so the perennial gardens have mostly been fending for themselves. It's my annual spring arthritis flare-up, and while it has been something of a pain, it could certainly be a lot worse.



But this isn't about my knee, it's about my garden. Specifically, what happens in a garden when there's no gardener tending it, during the most fertile months of the year.

The plants grow.
The flowers bloom.
The weeds multiply.
The world does not end.

During my enforced sit-on-my-butt days (which feel like they have gone on, and on, and on) I have been keeping myself occupied by knitting and listening to audio books. A few days ago there was a moment in the book when a character, reflecting on a war brewing in the book's imaginary world, mused that there might be nobody to see the peonies bloom the following year, but that they would still bloom.

Isn't that the truth, I thought, and if I needed proof all I had to do was look out the window.



Do the peonies care that I haven't been fussing over them? Nope.

Do the poppies mind that they haven't been staked and are sprawling with abandon over their neighbours? Apparently not.

And it seems I don't even have to plant things in order to have flowers, as evidenced by these volunteer foxglove.

Yes, there are weeds everywhere, and I'm going to pay at some point for letting the annual weeds go to seed, but in the meantime they're acting as a pretty good ground cover which is good because I haven't got around to watering, either. 

There is a humbling lesson in all of that: how much do I really matter? I don't mean that in a self-pitying way. I mean it in a reverential I-am-a-mere-mortal-looking-Mother-Nature-in-her-glorious-face kind of way. When it comes down to it, the idea that I can control what happens in my garden is sort of ridiculous, and I think Mother Nature is being very kind to let me try.

But at the end of the day I am still a gardener, and I'm itching to get in there and start cleaning things up. But even though my knee is slowly starting to feel better I know the worst thing I could do is overtax it. So I'm thinking tomorrow I might set the egg timer for 15 minutes, and see what I can get done. The next day, if all goes well, maybe 20.

But that still leaves me today, one more day, to watch the peonies bloom.

Home from the fair

I have always wanted to go to a Mother Earth News Fair, and finally, this year, I got a chance. Kim and I spent a long weekend in Puyallup, Washington, hanging out with lots and lots of homesteaders, gardeners, environmentalists and food activists, going to workshops and demonstrations, and cruising the vendor booths. 

Here are a few highlights.

Best workshop (Miriam's pick): "Growing Your Health Independence" by Dawn Combs of Mockingbird Meadows. Lots and lots of specific and practical information about stocking a largely home grown medicine cabinet for common family ailments.

Best workshop (Kim's pick): "Top Bar Hives: It's All About the Wax" by Christy Hemenway. (Here's a link to her TED talk about the importance of honey bees) I probably don't need to tell you that Kim has come home already planning her first hive.

Worst workshop. Ever. Hands Down: "The Half-Acre Homestead" by Lloyd Kahn. Despite its description, and despite the respected and long standing reputation of the presenter, this workshop was a series of photos of "homesteading tools" thought to be useful. Like a pitchfork. And a shovel. And nails hammered into a kitchen wall to hang cooking implements from. A cappuccino maker. And a spatula for scraping plates into a compost bucket. When the presenter started flashing photos of marijuana vaporizers (as a homesteading tool? Really? Is that because homesteading is so horrible?) I left. At the point so had half the audience.

Second worst workshop: "Homestead Healthcare" by Amy and Joseph Alton (aka "Nurse Amy and Doctor Bones").  I had my doubts about this one because the presenters are the owners of a company that sells medical supplies to doomsday preppers, but the workshop description was benign enough I thought there might be something there for me. Nope. Pretty quickly we were into isolation techniques for when the great pandemic hits, and how to keep "your women" from getting pregnant because then they wouldn't be able to contribute 110%. Who has women? Do men still own women? I left before they started talking about treating gunshot wounds and zombie bites.

Favourite signs that you're not at just any country fair: The candy apples? Organic. Those cinnamon-sugar mini donuts? Gluten-free. The pony cart rides?



Those ain't ponies...

Best Vendor Samples: First place goes to Bob's Red Mill, which was giving out gluten-free granola packets, nifty gizmos to keep open packages closed, and dough scrapers. The runner up is Mary's Crackers, which was giving out packets of, well, crackers.

Most Nerdy Fan Moment: Ed Begley Jr? Nah. Joel Salatin? Nope. Not even Barbara Damrosch. For me it was meeting Erica of Northwest Edible Life. I embarrassed myself. Read her wonderful post on the fair for a much more thoughtful take on the weekend than the one you're getting here.

Happiest Moment: Picking up Frankie at the kennel and being greeted by a happy dog instead of a stressed out one.

Halloween in May

At about 11:00 last night, Kim let Frankie out for a last pee before bed and then waved frantically at me through the kitchen window. "Bring your camera!" she mouthed through the glass.

The full moon was spectacular, but taking a picture in the dark with my little point and shoot?

I underestimated the super powers of said point and shoot, because all I did was (you guessed it) pointed and shooted  (okay, shot) and this is what I got.

Go ahead, click on that baby and get an even better view of our Halloween moon.

I don't know what to be more impressed by: Mother Nature or my Canon PowerShot.