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.

Fading into fall - Gardeners witness life on the fast track

A glowering sky, a stiff breeze, and plummeting temperatures brought an early look at what was to come.

Clear skies soon returned, which meant glorious Indian summer afternoons but also frost and serious trouble for tender tomatoes and peppers.

Fall  arrived in Southern Oregon in its usual drama queen fashion on Sept. 29. After weeks and months of dry heat and scorching sun, it was suddenly cold, damp, windy, and dark. In 24 hours we went from shuttering the house against the sun to firing up the wood stove, from shorts to sweaters,  from gin and tonics to hot toddies. The seemingly endless summer was over, and the gushing garden was sputtering toward dormancy. Still, it looked great hanging on under the glowering sky.

To coax a few more days of ripening from our cold-sensitive babies, we covered them with blankies. (2016 update. We still do this, but not this year as it is already Nov. 13, and we haven't had a frost.) 

Attempting to stave off veggie decline is kinda like plastic surgery for the garden. You know that  the annual plants that so recently vibrated with life and glory are soon-to-be-goners. They're fading into twisted vines and dusky crumbles, and within a couple months will have disintegrated into compost to live again as nutrients for next year's garden—small comfort as they face the inevitable. But still, in the fall, you try to save them with props and denial.

This may be a stretch, but I see something similar happening with my peers as we too dry into dusky crumbles. We have the major props going on, and I am not above hair dye and serious exercise, but I have to say. Why bother? (2016 update. I still bother!)

What's going to happen is inescapable. Gardens are teachers. They are life on the fast track.

 For most of my garden friends, it's eight or nine months max, start to finish. We gardeners see all these beings through from their astonishing emergence from seeds in February and March to lusty water-drinking sun-soaking life hounds in July and August to dying dogs tripping on their tongues in late September and October. Check out these I'm-going-to-live-forever-sunflowers in July, then on their last legs in mid-October.

We're so beautiful! they seem to shout with all that July color and drama.

Same beings a few months later. Sad, yes? But that's life.

Then into the garden refuse heap awaiting the grinder and, finally, the garden, where they're tossed onto rows to decompose over the winter. Could they even imagine such a thing back in July?

The garden heaped with leaves and refuse from the garden that just died.

2016 update. We deduced that feeding one year's garden refuse directly into the next year's garden likely promoted disease and insect infestation. We now spread the fall garden onto the orchard/pasture and use cover crops, manure, compost, and fall leaves to enrich the soil for the coming year. 

It's hard to watch, but damn, you can't help but draw the parallels. Do you know anybody who's heading into fall? Me? I think I'm probably late August, early September. Too early to sniff out the compost, but about ready to look into frost protection. And I'm not even thinking about winter.

2016 update

Now watching spinach and lettuce emerge in the cold frame, eagerly searching for light.

Late fall has arrived, but in true optimist fashion, I think that winter will be a long time coming. I'm looking forward to seeing the spinach finally emerge and enjoying a tender salad of winter greens come March.