Season's End

It is always a little bittersweet to get to this part of the fall, when I put the garden to bed, put away the outdoor furniture and fountain, and start cleaning the house to prepare for a long winter stuck inside. (I do a "fall cleaning" blitz rather than a spring one, usually.)

On the one hand, it is something of a relief to have one less thing on my plate--and the garden is a fair amount of work. On the other, it provides a bit of therapy and lots of lovely fresh veggies, which I'll miss. Still, this part of the year always rolls around, and here we are again.

Two weekends ago, my sainted friend Ellen (who will work for veggies and beer, bless her) helped me tear out the rest of the garden and put it to bed for the winter. I just left the basil (since we have been having a run of unusually warm weather, and I hadn't made the second batch of pesto yet). All I have left to do now is cover the beds with straw and pull the pump from the new pond.

Ellen taking down the last of the tomato cages.

An amphibian supervisor next to the asparagus bed.

It seems so empty now. The greenery you see is outside the garden. And mostly weeds.

Then I spent much of this last weekend putting up the last of the harvest, turning my bounty of golden delicious apples into applesauce (they're not really the perfect apple for that, being a bit too sweet, but they're ugly little organic apples and aren't great for eating out of hand) and much of the remaining basil into pesto. Everything that's left will probably die in the frost we're expecting tonight, but I've left it for the bees for now.

Basil!

Apples!

Applesauce prep. Thankfully, the slow cooker makes applesauce cooking a lot easier than it used to be.

Mystic supervised me in the kitchen.

Magic supervised me as I prepped the basil in front of the TV. It takes a long time.

Pesto ingredients. The flavored sea salt has citrus in it, made by my friend Chris. The garlic is from my garden too.

A fraction of what I ended up with. Pretty, isn't it?

I also had a visit the weekend before last from my pal Princess Alethea Kontis and her friend Lillie (Alethea lives in Florida, but was in the area visiting Lillie), which was lots of fun, and then a brief drive-by visit this last Sunday from pal Karen Buys as she drove from Bouchercon in Ontario back to her home in New Jersey. She brought me chocolate. Really good chocolate.

Princess Alethea!

Plus, I got to spend an unexpected three hours with Magic the Cat at the emergency vet on Saturday morning (we at least got to see her regular vet, who happened to be working, and it looks like it was nothing major), although I still managed to make a dump run with a borrowed truck-and-strong-guy to clear out the barn. YAY!

What have you done these last couple of weekends to celebrate the season's end?

Season's End

One of the best (and sometimes worst) aspects of living in upstate New York is that we have Seasons. We're not one of those places (I'm looking at you, San Diego), where the weather is more or less the same most of the time, and winter means it is 50 instead of 70. Here, it can be 70 one day and 30 the next, just because it feels like it, and when the seasons change, boy howdy, do you know it.

At least it's not boring :-)

Honestly, I like having seasons. I like the way the different times of year have different energy, and different looks, all of them beautiful in their own way. Although it took becoming a Pagan and learning about the Wheel of the Year, that cycle of ebb and flow that all things follow, before I made my peace with winter. Now, although I still don't enjoy the cold and the snow, I DO love the quiet, more restful energy of the winter, when nature slows down and slumbers, and the pace of life is a little bit slower. (In my case, not until after the holiday rush at the shop, but you know what I mean.) After rushing around all year trying to keep up with the yard and garden, and summer activities, it is nice to sit on the couch with a cat or five, a mug of hot chocolate, and a book.

There are lots of signals that tell me that the summer is over, fall is here, and winter is fast approaching. The wooly bear caterpillars are everywhere, the geese honk overhead as they fly south, and the trees have shown their glorious fall colors and are already beginning to fade.

 Across the street

 Next to the back of the barn

 There's always one show-off.

But for me, I know the season is over when I finish tearing out the garden and putting it to bed for the year. That's what I did last weekend (it was really a process over a couple of weeks, but the last of it was finished this Saturday). My friend Ellen and my step-daughter's mom Jo came over, Jo mostly to supervise and keep the other two of us company, since she'd had dialysis earlier in the day. Ellen and I pulled the rest of the plants out, saving a few green tomatoes to ripen on the counter, and leaving the last bed of spinach and lettuce, which will stay alive until the first snows. Here and there is a batch of kale or parsley. Otherwise, the beds are all empty and covered, waiting for the entire process to begin again in the spring. Next year's garlic is planted, and the fountain and pump have been pulled out of the pond. It seems strangely quiet and peaceful inside the garden fence, reminding me that I too should be starting to slow down a little, and turn inward.

Do you have seasons where you are? If so, do you like them all, or only one or two? Do you try and go with the flow, or simply charge along, no matter what? Happy fall!

Harvest at Summer's End

This is a bittersweet time of year for gardeners. The harvest is in full swing, and each time I walk out to the garden, basket over my arm, I come back with loads of things to put up for later or eat right now. That's a mixed blessing, of course--lots of work, and things that can't wait (or you end up throwing away your summer's labor because it rotted on the counter before you could get to it). And much in the garden is dead or dying, the leaves withering and turning brown.

I'm always somewhat relieved at this point--every year I reach exhaustion with that garden chores right about the time they peak :-) There is still much to do, of course, but the nights are turning cold, and soon I'll be watching the weather channel for warnings of frost, running out to rescue the last tomatoes and squash, clipping the delicate basil and making it into pesto before the cold turns it into nothingness.

Here are a few pictures of recent harvest hauls. Do you feel bittersweet about summer turning into fall, or are you relieved to have the heat behind you and the kids back in school?