... But I will get to that in the minute.
We had three mornings in a row of me having to scrape my windows, and one was right after a hard frost. And thus, summer has come to an end. The Celts called it Samhain (SOW-ayn, roughly, translates to "summer's end") and as many know it's calendered on November 1. Mother Nature, however, has her own calendar, so Samhain came to my back 40 feet this past weekend. So Sunday, after yoga, I set about the task of closing the garden for the season.
On Saturday, with foreknowledge of the coming hard frost, I gathered the last of the late tomatoes, green or not, from their vines. Sunday was cool, in the upper 40s but with a coat, earmuffs and the occasional hot flash I was perfectly fine. I pulled the broccoli I had allowed to bolt, the leftover vines of the tomatoes and peppers, the Brussel sprouts that got worms so never sprouted, and put those all into the yard waste bin. I decided at first to leave the weeds and such in the beds over the winter, to at least hold the soil in case of high winds. I turned my attention then to my compost bin.
Now, I had started to turn it at one point but was thwarted by bees... I just noticed I didn't blog about that! Long story short:
Dry compost leads to bumble bees. They are cute, fuzzy, slow, and not aggressive...they were annoyed and buzzing, but I decided to leave them alone. Rain was coming, so I left the last layer open in hopes they'd move out.
Rain happened and the bumblebees did indeed move out. Sadly, they had sublet their space to some yellow jackets I think. I don't know they were smaller, faster, definitely not as cute, and were way more aggressive. I only got stung once, but that was quite enough of dealing with compost for the season. (Other than occasionally putting stuff in it, but it had gotten full so even that had stopped).
Okay, back to this past weekend. I figured the frost had taken care of any stinging things, so decided to at least move things so the bin was together. I got to the middle of the larger part and things were starting to look good. Like dirt, rather than paper, eggshells, miscellaneous vegetables. Slightly encouraged I kept going until I got to the last level and lo and behold there it was. Brown, crumbly, ...COMPOST! I had done it! SOMETHING this summer had gone right.
Immediately, I decided to pull weeds and rake straw out of beds and start spreading. I got two of the three beds done that way before I ran out, so it wasn't MUCH, but it was there. I got done with that and put the bin back together, feeling fairly pleased with myself. My plan now is to put raked leaves over those beds to protect them (the rest into the compost bin) and when I turn compost in the spring, see what I can add, especially to bed number three.
Also, our apple tree continues to give us proper size apples. We now need to learn how to manage them so they don't get diseased.
Harvest time is a time of reflection, and there's certainly been a lot of that in a lot of areas. As far as the back 40 goes, "Hands off gardening" has to come to an end. If I had noticed the parasites on the Brussel sprouts, if I had done a few other things, the yield may have been less frustrating. So next year, my hope is to be a bit more involved rather than JUST letting nature take its course.
I'm considering renaming the blog, too. I named it thusly because it was my hope that getting Janet involved would help, but Alzheimer's has it's own idea, and it's own timeline, and there's nothing that one can do to change that. But we'll see...I will let that incubate over the winter.
Happy Samhain!
