Two weeks ago, in my garden. (August 22)
Last night, in my garden.
(If you're keeping garden notes and photographs and want to share it with the rest of us, do leave a comment with a link so that we may take a stroll through your garden too! It's a delight to see what and how things are growing all over, and to read the comments with such great gardening wisdom! Thank you all for continuing to share in this little project. And as a head's up, as the season winds down a bit, I'll switch over to every other week garden updates, so I'll see you back here for another one on the 19th!)
Oh, the late summer garden! I do so love the light out there these days. The cooler weather making it more comfortable for being in the garden. And the great number of things still coming along. Garlic and onions are drying in the shed. Cucumbers, so many herbs, peppers, tomatoes, cabbage, all manner of greens, and potatoes are coming in from the garden by the basket full every day.
And pole beans! Did you hear that? Did you see that up above? Oh yes. Pole beans. Mama gets the last laugh after all, because there are most definitely pole beans climbing up those poles in the middle of my garden, and beans ready to harvest on them. How this happened I do not know. I think it might have something to do with all my little helpers (well, just one little one, really) who liked to rearrange my seeds within the seed packets for entertainment (and the Mama who let her because it occupied her happily while I planted). It appears that I planted a mix of pole and bush beans in the very same place. Which, actually kinda works - the poles are climbing, and the bush beans have mostly passed there at the bottom. Maybe I'll even do it again next year.
My tomatoes are not quite as prolific as I had hoped given the number of plants I planted. But that's okay...I am not alone in that in my neck of the woods. Chickens are enjoying the ones that show up rotten. And we are doing our best to enjoy what we do have and preserve what we can. This year, I'm making a bit of passatta like I usually do for freezing (I do it a bit like this), but also playing with fermenting some of my tomatoes different ways (like this, for one).
I must say, the garden feels a little on the wild side these days! As my attention has needed to shift to other things - and will continue to do even more so in the month ahead - I've been letting a few things go here and there. There are beds I need to put to rest, a few cover crops I'd like to plant on some of them, row covers to get set up, and of course much more to harvest (oh, the squash - especially the blue hubbard, my favorite - are looking so promising!). But we certainly have reached the point in the season in which I find myself glad to only be gardening for a part of the year. For as much as I love every beautiful minute spent out there, and know I could extend my season much longer (with hopes and plans to do a bit of that), I am also grateful for a little break ahead as I feel myself pulled towards other things that the seasons to come ask of us. Not yet, of course....but soon. I can feel that pull happening. Before I know it, I'll be sitting in front of the wood stove on a cold January day, knitting in my hands and seed catalogs on my lap, planning and dreaming about the next garden. That's how it goes.
