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.

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. 

Still inventing - New Mexico chili pepper casserole

I recognize that not too many people are loaded with their own garden-fresh New Mexico type peppers. If you are, drop to your knees and do the wave. If you aren't, hie on down to the farmer's market, where it is pepper season to the max. Peppers are the last to go in our southern Oregon summer garden. They outlast the tomatoes, cukes, melons, and zukes. Even if their leaves blacken, the peppers themselves are A-OK.  Frost has taken a couple of big bites, but our bedsheet cover-ups have saved the day. So I've fired up the grill and have been roasting like crazy. The freezer exudes the faintest whiff of roasted peppers, and the house tonight is redolent with rich pepper essence. I swoon. Here's a simple  way to use 25-30 mild green chili peppers, say Big Jim or Anaheim.

Inventing Dinner

For years PK and I have marveled at our daily fare. We think it is the best in the world, and I'm not kidding. That is SO swaggering, but please bear with me. I bow before you whose Monday plates and Tuesday repasts and Wednesday feasts and home-cooked meals throughout the week also bring you to your knees with gratitude and praise. O holy skillet! Masterful grill! Garden font! Made-up recipes!

We  unabashedly exult (no one is around to hear, so we really go for it it) and imagine frequently what it might cost to eat what we eat if we had to buy it in restaurants, if we even could get it. We are the most ridiculous home-cooking foodies I know.

We couldn't afford comparable restaurant meals, for one thing. I have eaten in a few great restaurants —Italy comes to mind. But in general,  I can't remember a restaurant meal that I enjoyed as much as what we eat almost every night, even though I risk sounding prideful because I am the primary cook. (I cook. PK cleans up. That's our deal. Together we grow the food.) But I create the meals, chop the onions, garlic, peppers, tomatoes, potatoes etc. etc. etc., and it is a Zen exercise every time. More on the pleasure of kitchen details later, perhaps. But on to  dinner.

Dancing Into Fall

This is my young friend Katarina dancing joyfully in the mint-scented grass last night while cool winds blew fall into Southern Oregon. Rain was in the forecast, chill was in the air, and we celebrated the shift with our favorite thing. We cranked up the outside speakers and twirled, twisted and stomped til exhaustion to the musical mix she'd put together for me from her favorite dance tunes—18 high-octane gotta-boogie songs by artists ranging from The Who and The Police to Sublime and Bloc Party. Fueled by a little syrah and a lot of synergy that happens when two girls who love to dance get together, dusk turned to dark and the hours fell away and I didn't think too much about the fact that she's 40 years younger. Than I am.

Fall always dredges up that fading-into-old-age crap that's difficult to ignore when the flowers wither, the corn stalks rattle, the squash vines crumble, and the tomato and pepper plants shrink in dread of the soon-to-bite first frost. It's a little too easy to draw parallels with the waning hair color, the wrinkling skin, and the sagging unmentionables. In the garden, it won't be long before all but the insect-and-disease-affected plants will be tossed into the compost or ground up to plow right back into the garden from whence they came. Their energy doesn't vanish, though, it just changes. Their life current persists, and they'll return next year in other vibrant forms.

That's how I think about music and dancing—as current that persists and wells up in rhythm that feels like life itself moving. Switch on the right music, and it plays me. It plays Katarina, too, and my son Chris, and yoga teacher, Denise, and another young friend, Parker, and a few others I know who are blessed (some might say cursed) with the irresistible need to move to music. It is good to reaffirm that since I am undeniably in my own fall season, I can channel the unfathomable power of rhythm and dance to juice things up and keep the green going and going and going. Will it ever be gone? Not as long as I can hear and move and turn on the music. Loud.