Summer garden's last gasp

It isn't pretty out there in the cold mist of the garden, but since we haven't yet had a hard frost, some summer veggies are holding their ground, mainly tomatoes and zucchinis. Now we know who our friends really are.  But fall/winter gifts are coming, and we look forward to some tasty and nutritious winter salads. The work is winding down!
For now the garden tasks include: processing the remaining tomatoes, about 50 pounds that are now ripening on the  dining room table; making serrano sauce out of the peppers languishing in the back porch,  chopping/freezing the remaining pepper varieties, then cleaning and storing garlic harvested in August and now endangered in the moist damp of the garage. That's it!

Tomatoes and peppers harvested October 27, 2010. Late!

A season-transition harvest photo: the last of the zukes, but fall/winter chard and lettuce are just getting started. 

I'm grateful for all the bounty—which required a lot of hard work—but so happy that harvest is all but ended and we can kick back for several months and pull great food out of the freezer, the pantry, and the winter garden/cold frame and just sit around and read and start thumbing through the spring catalogs. (That "sitting around and reading" part was a big lie, but written with complete faith that someday we will both be able to relax enough to drop into a chair mid-day and read for a couple of hours. How old do we need to be before we're really "retired"?)

Truthfully, I look at the spot where I stand in my kitchen to process the garden and just generally cook, and wonder how many hours, over the past 30 years, I've been anchored in that same corner chopping, measuring, seasoning, tasting, drinking wine, and wondering. Wondering why.

Most of the time I'm in a Zen space. Chop chop, peel peel, sip sip. I enjoy on a primal level the colors, textures, and perfumes of the fresh foods beneath my knife and in my much-esteemed Cuisinart food processor, a treasured work-reducing friend. Lately, since the family is down to the two of us (with occasional extended visits from world-traveling-expedition-kayaking son, Chris, ) I question whether all this food production is necessary. Why can't we just go out to eat? Or buy deli food or something.

But crap. I know that I'm ruined, habituated to fresh food lovingly prepared, and PK is too. So while we can still plant and hoe, harvest and shell, chop and saute, it'll be cooking fresh, and we'll be eating incredibly well. Maybe we'll get over it. But probably not.

Nomad kayaking son ..... will I survive?

As I begin this post Nov. 18, son Chris, 23, is en route to India and perhaps Nepal, China and Tibet, on a two-month kayaking expedition. This is not "ordinary life" but it is his life. Here he is, my baby, 20 years ago dipping a paddle into the river for the first time. (That's his dad's vintage blue Dancer) And here he is a few years ago in a circling-the-drain Chilean waterfall. Actually, I"m not sure that's Chris. He and a Spanish kayaker explored this creek and took turns with the camera. Those days Chris was on his own with a hunger for adventure and a quiet determination to join an elite cadre of kayakers who travel the globe pursuing primo adventure and first descents. That's what he's doing now—primo adventure and first descents. And that's what he did in 2008 in Pakistan and Brazil, and in 2007 in Newfoundland and Chile. It's a ridiculous life. He toils for a few months to earn enough for life support and airline tickets, and then hops around the world with his kayak. It's not something that you envision, or can even imagine, for your child. But Chris is driven by an endless well of ambition and passion, so I go along, oscillating between pride and terror. Despite my fearful motherliness, I say, Go Chris!

Does this look like the perfect biking road? It is. And today we discovered it because when we were en route to Klamath Falls, OR,  on an entirely different mission, we got a phone call that directed the day elsewhere.  No longer were we headed to a Klamath-area bike ride, a soccer game, and then out to dinner with our youngest son, Chris and others, because, at the last minute, he was going here instead.

Chris is like that. Adventure calls and he pirouettes on a wave of impulse and desire to follow his kayaking dreams. Well, hell. We can change plans too, and we did and this is what we got. Not bad. It's the road to Elderberry Flats campground and, if you keep going, to Cow Creek, and Azalea, and Glendale. We can't wait to bike the whole route, but not today. Today just six miles into the potentially 46-mile round trip,  the sky dumped buckets. That meant riding six miles downhill in a torrent, but in a perverse sort of way, I enjoyed it. It was 64 degrees, not quite cold enough for hypothermia, and wet leaves are more colorful and pungent than dry ones.

Vine maples glowing despite the rain.

It was heaven, but I didn't mind being blasted by the car heater.

                                                                Done for the day.