Amy in the Garden

The tomatoes are the clearest evidence of the approaching end-of-season. They are still setting fruit enthusiastically, but the fruit is smaller and the ripening is slower. My harvest is less hysterical and more measured. Although perhaps urgency is still warranted, because MacKenzie has discovered that my tomatoes are delicious (such a sophisticated dog, appreciating heirloom tomatoes!), and has started eating them OFF the vine.

Anticipation....

The Ristra red chili pepper plants are heavy with fruit, but they are ripening more slowly and ripening when they are shorter. I’m starting to harvest “cute” peppers instead of impressively handsome peppers.

The basil leaves are starting to lose their deep-green depth. The parsley is sporting a few yellowed stalks, and I’m hearing the call to make pesto daily, while they’re still with me.

I have ended the sunflowers’ lofty reign over the northwest corner of my garden. The bees have left and so have the birds, and I have no reason to tolerate their leaning against the tomato trellis any more. Enough already, they are resting now on the compost heap — although my work continues with them. I need to chop the stalks.

The Brandywine tomatoes continue to appear slowly, like barges sailing down slow canals. Perhaps they are the Kale of the Tomato World, planning to be with me long past the frost?!

Brandywines take their time.

I think it’s interesting to compare the revved-up activity of people in September, what with school and all, to the gradual decline in the pace of the garden. Perhaps a merciful Master Plan, so that we humans can cope? I am reminded of the reason the school calendar was set as it was so long ago, to allow the children to participate in the harvest and then, when the outside work was done, to turn inside (in every way) to take up another worthy occupation.

I’m thinking ahead to my slowing harvest, how to make the most of my diminished things. There isn’t much about a brown lunch bag that is poetic, but it will allow me to ripen the last of the tomatoes once the frost (pun) hits.

WORDS FROM OTHERS

“There is a singer everyone has heard,
Loud, a mid-summer and a mid-wood bird,
Who makes the solid tree trunks sound again.
He says that leaves are old and that for flowers
Mid-summer is to spring as one to ten.
He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers
On sunny days a moment overcast;
And comes that other fall we name the fall.
He says the highway dust is over all.
The bird would cease and be as other birds
But that he knows in singing not to sing.
The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.”

— Robert Frost, “The Oven Bird”