— Sarah MacLean
To say it was a beautiful day would not begin to explain it. It was that day when the end of summer intersects perfectly with the start of fall.
— Ann Patchett
Summer was over in twenty minutes that day. Finished. At four o'clock in the afternoon the roses were quiet on their stems, full-blown, fulfilled; the water in the pool was warm; the leaves on the trees quiet, too, and green. The cat lay with his belly to the sun, steeped in heat.
― Elizabeth Enright
Last week I talked about the first sign of the ending of summer – the CNE. This was followed on Tuesday by the kids going back to school. The days are staring to grow shorter, the nights cooler, and it’s time to clean out the gardens in preparation for next year.
Mother Nature, however, needs to get with the program.
While the days are definitely growing shorter, last week was one of the hottest weeks of the summer. This is Canada, so very few, if any, schools have air conditioning. The poor granddaughter just about melted, and with her busy afternoon schedule she was only able to make it over once to go swimming.
I was happy to go in with her – the pool temperature was 80F, the highest it’s been the entire season. Ironically, it didn’t feel that warm because the air around us was so warm. Figures, eh? Needless to say, we were back to being sealed in the house with the doors and windows shut for the week.
As for the gardens . . . well, thanks to the Japanese beetle infestation, the green beans aren’t doing all that great. Was it only last year they were growing so fast I could barely keep up with picking them? This year I have to fight my way in because they’re so tangled with the tomato plants, and I’m finding just enough for a meal each time.
The tomatoes are doing well though. We have an insane bumper crop of cherry tomatoes, thanks to the hubby getting four plants. The three we have in a planter on the deck look like they’re just about done, but the one I planted with the regular tomatoes is still going strong.
I worried about my tomato plants because I accidentally planted pole beans instead of bush beans and they grew right over top of them, but I shouldn’t have worried. They’re covered in tomatoes, but they’re all still pretty green. I’ll be making enough spaghetti sauce to keep us going for the winter if they all start ripening at the same time.
Actually, I’ve started picking them anyway. If you wait until they turn red, they start to rot on the vine. But if you pick them when they get just a hint of pink to them, they’ll finish ripening in the house. And last year, a lot of our tomatoes where still green when the frost warnings started, so we picked them and put them in paper bags – they ripened slowly and we had fresh tomatoes right up until Christmas.
The lettuce is done. I will be planting less of it next year – we just couldn’t eat it fast enough, despite it being the best lettuce I’ve ever grown. Never saw a hint of the beets I planted, and I’m not sure what happened to the spinach – I think it’s somewhere in the morass of beans and tomatoes, but good luck finding it.
The carrots may not be a bumper crop, but they held their own. I’m leaving them in the ground for now because they’re still a little on the puny side. But the peppers! Wow, have we got a good crop of peppers going. My neighbor (who gave me the plants) said to leave them on the vine until they turn red. So far only a couple of them have got that far, the rest are big and green. I might pick a few of them anyway, just to make sure we don’t lose them to bugs or rabbits.
So looks like summer isn’t quite done with us yet. What do you do to mark the end of summer?
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