2026 W36: Neighborhood goldfinches

§ Hello. It is hard to believe it’s already September. § In the garden we finally got our first few ripe tomatillos of the season and our three cayenne pepper plants are providing us with generous quantities of peppers. Early in the week I dried a sheet tray full of them and I’ve already picked enough ripe chilis to start drying another tray of them any day now. I’m hoping to build a large enough stockpile to last us until next summer, at least. Our clematis vines are suddenly full of flowers which seems to make the bees happy as they search around for sources of late-summer nectar. Our anise plants—which have slowly begun to take over basically every bare patch of soil as a result of our new-parenthood-induced neglect of the garden—are full of tiny seeds that all of the neighborhood goldfinches seem to go crazy for. § At work, the giant five-foot cylinder I started building a couple of weeks ago is finally finished. We ended up painting it with a few layers of magnetic paint before…