Amy in the Garden

Chapter 15 of “Charlotte’s Web,” by E.B. White, begins like this, “The crickets sang in the grasses. They sang the song of summer’s ending, a sad, monotonous song. “Summer is over and gone,” they sang. “Over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying.”

I hear the cricket’s song in my garden, and I have felt the end of this summer on my face with the cool temperatures at the beginning and the end of the day. I do feel a definite urging to tend to the garden: harvest, weed, prepare for next year.

My potatoes ask to be lifted off the surface of their bed (I tried the no-till technique with great success), and brought indoors. My carrots are irritated at my long neglect. “When will it be our turn?” they grump.

How can I explain that with everything else in the world plucking at my sleeve, a vegetable that waits patiently without decomposing is such a welcome relief that I intend to take full advantage. If tomatoes are dropping like bombs onto the ground, their wonderfulness forever wasted because I didn’t get to them in time, how can I justify lifting up carrots who are on blissful pause — at least until the ground freezes? Sorry carrots, your patience is rewarded with my neglect.

The vines of the Good Mother Stallard beans are showing yellow leaves at the bottom of the vines, and every day, the yellow creeps higher. I harvested a basketful of dried pods before last week’s torrential rains, and more are drying in air, waiting for me.

The zinnias are slowly leaning towards the earth, some blossoms still bright and electric, but most fading into browns and grays. The swiss chard leaves have unattractive black polka dots, decay that elicits my guilt. I just didn’t get to them quickly enough. The jalapeno peppers are showing black patches that creep slowly from the top of the fruit and then spread towards the tips. The lima bean pods rest ever closer to the earth, hidden by their vigorous leaves, as if hoping to slip into rot without my seeing them in time. “Glow with health, you strong well-formed leaves! If we pods can just get onto the ground and re-seed ourselves for next year,” I imagine them whispering….

I love the fall, but as a gardener it is now bringing the anxiety and urgency of preparing everything for next year before frost arrives and puts an end to my best intentions.

I want to arrange the composted heap of pulled plants on my hillside, to set the stage for three large mounded hills that I hope will be the nursery for kabocha squash vines. The deer did not pay the slightest attention this year to the volunteer gourd vines that are producing many many gourds, and so I am encouraged. Perhaps the deers’ lack of interest will extend to something in which I am intensely interested?! But I want those untidy heaps knocked back and arranged into tidy hills now, while I can still maneuver a spading fork through them, creating defined piles of compost to break down over the winter, and then be covered with topsoil in the spring. The promise of dark-green squashes that harbor dark-orange interiors is incredibly energizing.

I hear the crickets, and I’m reaching for my tools.

WORDS FROM OTHERS
“…the flavor is sweeter due to the stress of winter cold causing some of their starch to turn to sugar. We have taken advantage of that effect of cold temperature on root sweetness to turn normal carrots into ‘candy’ carrots. We plant in early August and leave the baby carrots in the ground all winter under the protection of a cold frame or tunnel. The cold temperature transformation of our carrots from popular food to near addiction status is attested to by our friends and customers, whose demand has turned that lowly root into our most acclaimed winter crop.”

— Eliot Coleman, “Four-Season Harvest”