Change-of-season madness

Yesterday, for the first time in months, I awoke to the sharp smell of the gas stove firing up,
warming the kitchen and heating the tea water. Dang. Summer's gone!

Given the date, it shouldn't be a surprise that fall crept in after just a few days' warning. Sunflowers, cosmos, and cornstalks have been leaning toward the compost, longing, I think, for restful rotting after a summer of boisterous growth and the recent marauding of feasting birds. The sweet smell of rain has been in the air, leaves have crackled underfoot, and honking geese have swirled noisily overhead. What a great elongated summer we've enjoyed! But still. saying goodbye to the garden and fresh food in magnificent abundance is sad, as is depositing into the memory bank soft summer air and lazy barbecues. Sigh.

 Outside, fog drapes across the hills like a swath of cotton batting, cooling the forest and fields and settling in for the long winter ahead. Variations of this scene will be evident beyond the garden for the next six months. Eeek. It'll get a lot wetter and colder and the vegetation in the foreground will soon disappear into compost. Not a bad thing to become, really.

I spent yesterday holed up in the kitchen with tomatoes and peppers, onions and herbs, making salsas and marinara sauces.

Marinara sauce bubbling on the stove.  Wow. It makes the heart race!

On the brighter side, at the kitchen counter son Chris tapped away on his cranky computer and plotted logistics for his next adventure. He's home for a few days after returning from Brazil, where he does crazy stuff like this. Don't be deterred by a foreign language—Portuguese. The link is to a trailer for a popular Brazilian adventure/reality series in which Chris is one of three "stars." He's headed back to Africa soon, then back to Brazil.  His is not at all an ordinary life!

Back to my world, currently dominated by tomatoes. Not too exciting, but I will be so jazzed this winter opening jars of salsa or thawing marinara sauces for quick dinners.  Maybe I'd rather go to the Congo with Chris?
Hmmm.  I don't think so.

Salsa!  And it only took ALL DAY to make!
But we also prepared a dozen quarts of sauces for the freezer thus justifying an entire day in the kitchen.

Today's garden take could be the last as frost is predicted tonight. The green beans, cucumbers, basil, and peppers can't tolerate frost, and the giant zucchini leaves will blacken overnight. So sad.

I love gardening and cooking and all the rest of my little Southern Oregon reality show. It's just that when Chris alights for a few days, I become restless and wondering. What if I had diverted 40-some years ago from the well-beaten path into middle-class life? What if I had followed my heart into travel and adventure? And then I worry, what if Chris doesn't do this?  What if he finds himself 20 years from now stranded on a bridge between his youth and an unsustainable level of risk-taking?
I'm not too worried. Just wallowing in the usual over-protective mama kind of crap. He'll be fine. Won't he?

All those veggies I harvested today are sitting in the kitchen awaiting attention, as are several boxes of tomatoes on the back porch. Should I dehydrate some, or just stick them in the freezer whole? More sauces, salsas? I admit I'm so ready for harvest and food preservation to be over! In a couple weeks, it will be except for apples, which are just now coming ripe out there in the wind and rain. Applesauce? Dried apples? Pies? Cobblers? Decisions, decisions.

What if like Chris, I was deciding whether to go to the Arctic or Angola—or both, plus several other possible destinations on his ever-changing schedule. It's certain that he'll provide ongoing vicarious thrills plus ample cause for maternal angst as I remain here in the cool and indifferent landscape, so recently spilling over with vegetables and berries and now so close to shutting down for the winter.

October garden bounty

It's unusual for gardeners in Southern Oregon to have summer-like conditions in mid-October that result in August-like harvests. But I'm not complaining! Well, maybe I am. Today I harvested about 100 more pounds of tomatoes, lots of peppers, a few zukes, a handful of eggplants, and enough cukes to make a couple more sour cream cucumber/onion salads. The basil has succumbed to light frost, the corn is long gone, the eggplant now depleted, and the tomatillos never made it to fruition.The winter garden, however, is looking good and we know that lettuce, kale, chard, broccoli, cabbage, and brussel sprouts are in the near future. For now, we'll luxuriate in summer's long harvest.

Jalapenos, red & green, make everything better!

The weather forecast says that winter will arrive Friday (cold rain) and stick around for five days. And it's all downhill from there. So while it lasts, I celebrate the garden's fecundity and the resulting gourmet fare.....every-day amazing feasts.  If you'd like recipes for any of these, I'm happy to accommodate. Just respond in comments or email me at mkorbulic@gmail.com. Spaghetti squash lasagna is especially deluxe.

Spaghetti squash lasagna. Amped-up flavor without pasta.

 Potatoes, zukes, onionx, garlic, and lots of peppers stir-fry.

Here's what the garden looks like these days. A sorry sight, except for the tomatoes ripening beneath dying vines, the frost-protected peppers holding forth and still ripening, and the winter veggies beginning to flourish amidst the mulch.