Putting the Garden to Bed

Two sounds of autumn are unmistakable…the hurrying rustle of crisp leaves blown along the street…by a gusty wind, and the gabble of a flock of migrating geese.
— Hal Borland

...I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house. So I have spent almost all the daylight hours in the open air.
— Nathaniel Hawthorne

If a year was tucked inside of a clock, then autumn would be the magic hour.
— Victoria Erickson

You know it’s autumn when . . . the temperature drops enough that we’re almost getting frost at night. And even on the sunny days we’re still needing to wear a sweater outside, if not a jacket. Yup, it’s my favorite time of year.

I even went down to the waterfront with a friend one day last week. We took our travel mugs of hot beverages and meandered along the boardwalk to the end, then sat in the sun on one of the benches. The wind coming off the lake was cool, but the sun was pretty warm so it kind of evened things out.

Then on the way back we watched a rather large flock of geese flying overhead and they began to circle in for a landing in a soccer field along the boardwalk. And then we noticed something we’d never seen before. The geese were flying sideways. I didn’t even know they could do that. And I really regretted that I didn’t have my phone with me because I would have taken a video of it, just to prove I’m not crazy.

At least I had witnesses though. My friend saw it too, and the artist who was weaving cloth into the chain link fence dropped what she was doing to take a video with her tablet.

The following day the hubby and I decided we should take advantage of the rain-free weather and clean out the vegetable gardens. There were actually a few beans left on the vines on the fence, and a lot of ones that had gone to seed and dried out. I already had enough seeds for next year so I didn’t feel bad at all pulling those vines. I noticed my neighbor on the other side of the fence had already pulled hers.

The yellow bean plants in my garden had already started to die off, and again there were still beans on them, mostly gone to seed and dried up. But believe it or not, there were still blossoms on some of them, meaning they were still producing beans. I didn’t care, I pulled them anyway.

My first crop of peppers had been lost to creatures unknown, and my second crop was so nice looking it was a shame to pick them, but I did. Better I get them than the frost. The same went for the tomatoes. We got a few of the larger tomatoes when they ripened on the vine, but none looked as good as the green ones I ended up picking. I think I’m going to try making a green tomato salsa with my bounty.

I knew the tomato plants were big this year, but it wasn’t until I started pulling them that I realized how insanely big they were. Most of them were doubled over their cages and when straightened up were taller than me. And most of them still had blossoms on them.

We had such a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes (I have about 15 bags of them in the freezer) that the hubby decided to not save any of the green ones, and the few red ones that were left (some of which were already on the ground) he left for the forest critters.

Now all that’s left of my vegetable gardens is the asparagus and the rhubarb. According to my neighbor (who gave them to me), I’m supposed to wait until the foliage dies off and then cut them back.

Looks like I’m ready – bring on the frost!