Signs of the Times

At the close of a perfect day, weather-wise, I sit in the hammock and think about the season. There is a definite feeling in the air, almost we are ready to batten down the hatches, just one last push to finish the harvests.

Because it was so beautiful outside, I decided to bring in some of the garden that has been neglected. I grew celery for fun, celery that decided to be really bushy and brilliant, but didn’t plump out like the stuff from California. I am okay with that, since I mostly use it to flavor soups and stews in the winter time. I decided to dry the leaves and chop the stems really fine to dehydrate them. If I put them into the freezer, I tend to lose track of where my baggies of celery are and end of having an inglorious rummage when I want to make soup. This year I’ll go for a glass jar of dried veggies in the pantry.

I am quite fed up with tomatoes, but I picked ten pounds of stragglers today, and who would have thought I would ever be tired of them when I was watching them so closely in July? I’ll turn them into salsa with my secret recipe, one I hardly dare to mention among serious salsa makers for fear of losing all my canning cred. (It’s one I get from Mrs. Wages. Shh. Because I dislike chopping that many peppers and onions.) Some of the tomatoes I picked today were going bad, so I lobbed them toward the chicken fence. My throwing arm isn’t all that good and they kept falling short. Lady, our springer spaniel who lives to retrieve anything one throws, dashed after the tomatoes as I threw them. She ate them all. Weird.

I grew jalapeño peppers for making poppers, but I had enough for an experimental batch of cowboy candy. This is completely new to me, but I’ll try anything once. No, actually I won’t. Not candied onions.

Awhile ago I did the “turn the largish zucchini into mock pineapple” thing with a few blimps we didn’t pick in time. The children groaned with anticipatory delight. (Ha.) I tasted them. They have the mouth feel of a peach, not mushy, and taste exactly like pineapple. Not bad at all. Was it worth buying four bucks worth of pineapple juice to can nine pints of mock pineapple? I don’t know, but now I know I can can it if I want to.

We have harvested our black beans, dried on the plant, easy peasy. I love this gathering of the last bits and pieces feeling. My inner forager feels that we are nearly ready for the cold months, as if Super Wally and Aldi were not two miles up the road. The less I have to go there, the better. I don’t know how it has been for you recently, but for us (not changing anything in our spending habits for the household) the cost of groceries has increased almost a hundred and fifty dollars a month. It may not seem like that much, but it’s close to two thousand per year that we would normally use for other things. I figure anything we can grow is a good thing.

In that spirit I have been saving seeds. The Romaine lettuce bolted and made some pretty flowers that turned into daintily dried seed heads which I picked today. I dried spaghetti squash seeds and will do the same with the butternuts and Roma tomatoes. The simplest way I know to do this is to smear the seeds onto a paper towel when I cut the veggies, label the towel with a sharpie, and let them dry before I store them in a bag in the freezer for the next growing season.

Moving on from the food preservation, I observe the first brilliant maple in the woods. We only have a few young maple trees, easily overlooked until they show off in the fall. The Virginia creeper on the chimney is deeply scarlet, as is the poison ivy at the edge of the trail.

On Sunday a few of us ladies discussed our varying feelings about autumn. Many say it is their favorite season, but some of us feel the sadness of all the dying. One suggested that all the color is a brave thing in the midst of the shutting down, and a fellow gardener said the dormant season feels restful to her, not dead. So there are all these ways of looking at fall, and I think that maybe I can learn to have a healthier view of all the dying. I am listening to some of Michael Perry’s essays and he said this about autumn: “The land is at ease with the idea of mortality.”

One thing we all agreed on, pumpkin spice lattes are overrated. It’s a bit of a rebel thing. I am sorry if this hurts your feelings, but if I need a latte with a vegetable in it, I’ll make my own without a quarter cup of sugar. I have done this, and they aren’t bad, especially with pumpkin pie spice sprinkled on top.

This week I strolled through TJ Maxx, a thing I love to do. It’s such a mash-up of brilliant and terrible ideas. I saw pumpkin spice scented dog wash, all the candles, and mugs with admonitions like fall into autumn. The pinnacle of fall decor had to be the stuffed gnome with a chef’s hat printed with leaves and pumpkins. He was holding a tiny go-cup and wearing an apron printed with pumpkin spice and everything nice. Olivia and I stood in that aisle and marveled at the genius that managed to put all those different elements into one piece of decor. I hoped someone would appreciate him enough to take him home, but we decided to pass.

Go, fall into autumn, or whatever it is that you need to do to flourish this season!