Late August

I've been excited by the amount of recipes that use zucchini. Pulling down my cookbooks and perusing the indexes has given me a number of choices. Marcella Hazan apparently loved the prolific little vegetables and has a number of recipes scattered throughout her cookbooks that utilize them. I can only give so many away. I can't imagine that Andy is going to be too happy over the next couple of weeks but perhaps I can keep the zucchini use down to side dish status so he doesn't have to partake.

The garden has survived quite well my absences this past month. As September comes, I've been trying to get into the garden and harvest what I can. The Gravenstein apples are picked and a lot of the asian pears are ready as well. I had another batch of peas but I think I found another reason to keep them as a cool weather crop: caterpillars and aphids. My tomatoes are ripening, the cucumbers need constant watching and (Yes!) I have pumpkins. Those Howden pumpkins grow a bit strangely – they start out yellow and seem destined for odd shapes. The sugar pumpkins – five that I can count – are perfectly round and filling up the space quite nicely. I'm still watching the lima beans to see when they are ready for harvest. All in all, my garden is giving back its bounty and I want to honor that by using up whatever is given.

I want to plant some more spinach and carrots, swiss chard and kale before it is too late. And then it will be time to put this garden to bed for the winter. The new beds need a heavy dose of composted fertilizer and some time to break down for early spring planting. My perennial beds need cleaning out and certain items transplanted before it gets too cold.
This morning there was a coolness to the air that spoke of changing seasons to come. Even though there is technically a month left of summer, the end of August always heralds the closing of the season. The transition from summer to fall here in the northwest can happen abruptly and suddenly those lovely days of balmy 80 degree weather disappear behind clouds and drizzle. In what feels like a blink of an eye, it is October and the evening temperatures have dropped into the high thirties. I can hope for an extended summer but the abundance of heat over the past two months has given me an explosion of greenery, flowers and produce that has to be managed before the weather turns. And the work calls to me – I want to get out there and get my hands in the dirt – even as I take my youngest child school shopping and help my other daughter get ready to travel abroad for five months. There will be time – I'll have to make the time to happily go putter in my gardens.