Garden of Summer-past

Goodbye garden. Hello garden-blogging fail.



I'm equal parts thrilled and cringing that October is almost here.

This is my very favorite time of year. Running through crunchy leaves, sipping spiced cider, listening to my chickens sing as they scratch up the last of Summer's bugs, tidying up the garden in perfect hazy afternoon light, hearing combines chewing through the fields surrounding us, constantly sampling bits of whatever is going on or coming off our overworked dehydrator, tripping over the produce that spills out of our entryway and into our home... The whole season is one great big sensory experience, and I love it.

Cringing because, well, these glorious weeks are so fleeting.

And here it is, yes, almost October.


{not snow - cattail seeds}

And I have failed to blog about... anything and everything. But the garden? I barely mentioned it three times. That makes me cringe too. Seedlings in eggshells, harvesting peas, and voluptuous eggplants. That was it.

I did the writing in my head.

Here are handful of abbreviated posts that never made it to press:

1. I neglected far too much of our garden the previous year. The perfect solution to that is obviously to add another fifty square feet and five NDSU home garden variety trials. The observing, learning, comparing, tasting, and ownership the kids had of their trials was a beautiful thing. I wholeheartedly recommend this program to my North Dakota friends!

2. Our pole bean tee-pee was magnificent. I've never grown pole beans before. I underestimated them. It was shocking how the tee-pee went from bare to covered to unrecognizable (in a matter of fourteen days) as the beans went beyond crazy. The cats loved that thing, far too much. They even left offerings exactly in the middle of it. So weird.





3. The younger boy planted sixteen watermelon plants. See variety trials above. See oppressed overworked dehydrator above.



4. Apples! Finally these trees produced enough to justify using the word harvest. And harvest we did. We waited four and a half years for this.


{maybe that one had a bug?}

5. I cannot imagine fall without winter squash. A whole long shelf full. Every one of my seeds rotted in the ground this Spring, and I was irrationally upset about it. Yeah, I know I can get winter squash at the grocery store or the Farmer's Market. It just isn't the same. Then I found a volunteer something among the sunflowers that looked suspiciously gourd-like. Sweet happy day when I realized it was, in fact, winter squash. God does answer insignificant little prayers.