It’s Not Over Quite Yet

Our days are busy with cleaning up garden beds, we are still planting some last minute things in the display beds, and garlic will go in over the next two weeks. We refuse to let anything get caught in one of those early autumn frosts. So, each night Rick checks his trusted weather source for temperature dips, and we make our evening rounds covering the last of the vegetables hoping to eek out a few more days ( weeks) before we really have to call it a season. At night our gardens look a bit like a Halloween display, sheets and burlap ghosts lay still around the farm, the last of the chard, winter squash, broccoli, and cabbages tucked warmly underneath. As the winter squash fully ripens, we haul them in and place them in the greenhouse to cure. In early August we feel almost an overwhelming burden with all there is to pick and preserve. Now, knowing our short growing season is nearing its end, we treat the gathering of this last bounty with a new reverence. Oh, is that a little zucchini still clinging to its vine? How delightful. A few more sprigs of basil that have escaped the nightly frost? Bring it in, more pesto! What’s still left to pick in your gardens?