gardening season is over. 

We’ve not had frost yet, though there is “patchy” frost in the forecast for Monday night and “areas” of frost Tuesday night with an expected low of 33F/.5C. If we do get frost, it’s a week late, though with climate change the first frost date now jumps unreliably around between the middle to late October. Facebook gave me a 15-years-ago-today memory from back when I actually used to post things on Facebook. On this day fifteen years ago we had several inches of snow that melted on the pavement but stuck in the grass. My, how times have changed.

Even if the frost doesn’t make it to the garden, the growing season is over. There is not enough daylight, and even with days last week being warm 75F/24C – 80F/27C, the tomatoes still on the vine and half ripe, only successfully ripened one tiny cherry tomato. And the pole beans, still producing flowers, give me five small green or purple bean pods a day instead of ten large ones. 

The work of the garden is not quite finished yet, however. Since it has finally gotten cold enough, I can plant the garlic for next summer’s harvest. I’ve got a giant bulb of “Music” to break up and plant, and lots of small bulbs that I grew up from garlic seeds I collected two years ago. I think these are large enough that I might get cloves big enough to eat next summer. And I have seed I saved from garlic this year to start growing up. 

The Jerusalem artichokes should be ready to begin digging up later in the week. A frost makes the roots sweeter. We have a lot of sunchokes to dig since they have leapt from their bed and invaded other parts of the garden. This means we can dig and eat them with abandon. 

And, of course, we’ve got to get the chickens ready for winter too. We need to make a few repairs to the coop roof, give the inside a good cleaning, and make sure the water heater and heating lamp are also in working order. 

Part of me is looking forward to being done with all the things and having some quiet, fallow time to rest and dream. The other part of me is already looking ahead and thinking about what I want to grow next year, what needs to be pruned in spring, or transplanted to a new location. It’s hard to just stop after going for so many months; since February when I started the onion seeds indoors. Stop I will, at least for a couple of weeks, but it takes time to wind down.

Nevertheless, I have ordered some seeds for next year already. I got some native plant seeds from Prairie Restorations and don’t feel guilty about it at all because these need to be sown in winter. I’ve got my winter sowing containers out and will be filling them with compost this weekend. The seeds won’t get planted just yet though, that will be a task for December or January. I had such success growing yarrow from seed two years ago, I wanted to try some other plants because it is infinitely cheaper to grow many plants from seed than it is to buy the plants someone else has grown. Here is what I’m going to try and grow:

• Black-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia Hirta)
• Wild Lupine (Lupinus perennis)
• Columbine (Aquilegia canadensis)
• Showy Penstemon (Penstemon grandiflorus)
• White Prairie Clover (Dalea candida)

I also saved some seed heads from a lovely clump of Blue Grama grass (Bouteloua gracilis) that came into its own this year. I found the dangling seed heads utterly delightful. I thought they looked like tiny fish, but another description I have seen describes them as “horizontal blond eyelashes.” I’m hoping to grow more of this grass, especially since a small pot from a nursery is $12, which is why I only have one clump of it.

I’ve also purchased some vegetable seeds from Seed Savers Exchange. They had a 20% off sale so I had reasons! Sadly, the seeds I really wanted to get, Mother Mary’s Pie Melon, were out of stock (and are now in stock, grr). No matter, I found a few other seeds I wanted to try:

• Pencil Pod Golden Wax Bean. A yellow bush bean. I’ve been unhappy with the bush green beans I’ve been growing the last many years, and when my rabbit guest ate all the beans I had intended to save for seed to plant next year, I decided it was a sign. Back when the garden was very small I grew yellow wax beans and was astonished by how prolific they were. We’ll see if that is still the case next summer.
• Council Bluffs Heirloom Tomato. This year we grew a black slicing tomato and it was such a disappointment; they never really got black—more of a red-brown, and we only got a few. Plus the flavor was unremarkable. After I winnowed down the vast tomato choices to four, James chose this one to try.
• Tolli’s Sweet Italian Pepper. This year we tried out banana peppers and they were good, but not quite what we wanted. So this is what we are trying next.
• True Lemon Cucumber. I haven’t grown cucumbers in ages because traditional green cucumbers and my digestive system don’t agree with one another. It’s not that they make me burp, but they cause me pain. These are round, yellow cucumbers that are apparently popular in Australia. Along with looking sort of like a lemon, they have a slightly citrus-y flavor too, and are allegedly easy to digest. Good for pickling and eating fresh. If the fresh doesn’t agree with me I will be fine eating them as relish, since it is only raw cucumber (just like raw onion) that I don’t get along with.

I’ve also got a list of plants I’ve read about in books and other gardening blogs that I would like to try. But for now, I will not go in search of them. They are something to look forward to when there is finally snow on the ground.

Reading

• Essay: In Praise of Things Being Just Plain Good by Molly Templeton. Templeton is so good at examining how and why we read. In this essay she wonders why we think everything we read needs to be gobsmackingly amazing, what’s wrong with a plain good book? Indeed, I find myself falling into that trap quite frequently, thinking if the book is not going to somehow be a masterpiece that I don’t have time for it because there are simply too many books to read in the first place. I miss out on some really good books. I have been trying to adjust my attitude, so the essay came along at a good time. This year, more than any other recent year, I’ve read books bookish friends have sent me or recommended that I might not have picked up otherwise. Have they all been amazing? Some of them have. Others have been just plain good entertainment. I am beginning to feel like I am finally sloughing off my thick English major and book blogging skin and remembering what it was like to read when I was a kid, which, ironically, led me to major in English.
• Book: Recognizing the Stranger: On Palestine and Narrative by Isabella Hammad. This is the Edward W. Said Memorial Lecture at Columbia University Hammad delivered nine days before October 7, 2023. The outrageous irony of her speaking on literature and in strong support of Palestine at Columbia, a university whose administrators clamped down hard on students protesting the genocide in Gaza that continues over a year later, needs to be, er, recognized. Because the lecture was published after October 7, Hammad has added on an Afterword specifically addressing Gaza. It is a powerful little book. Hammad talks about recognition scenes in literature, of which she is a fan and herself likes to write them, and extends it out to life, particularly recognizing the humanity of Palestinians. I found it all so good I read it twice.

Quote

In the language of both law and literary form, then, recognition is a kind of knowing that should incur the responsibility to act for it to have any value beyond personal epiphanies, or appeasing the critics of the one doing the recognizing. Great effort is required to ensure that such a moment marks the middle of the story, and not the finale. Another act must follow.

~Isabella Hammad, Recognizing the Stranger, page 50

Listening

• Podcast: Between the Covers: Isabella Hammad: Recognizing the Stranger. It just so happened that as I neared the end of my first reading of Hammad’s book, she was interviewed on Between the Covers. A fantastic interview, it is also part of why I read the book again straightaway after I finished it the first time.
• Podcast: Planet Critical: Sick People or Sick Society? Rachel Donald talks with climate psychotherapist Steffi Bednarek about anxiety, depression, climate grief and mental health. Bednarek insists that people who are suffering from climate anxiety, depression and grief have nothing wrong with them, that they are, in fact, having a completely rational and legitimate response to what is happening in the world. They don’t need a therapist to “fix” them, it is the world that is sick and needs to be fixed. This was a really good discussion.

Watching

• Still watching Pride and Prejudice with Jennifer Ehle and Colin Firth. Three episodes down, and I think one more to go.

James’s Kitchen Wizardry

Last weekend James used some of our surplus tomatoes to make tomato cake. Well cupcakes, to be exact. Inspired by a recipe from The Farmer’s Almanac, James made a veganized version with almond-tofu frosting. I didn’t know what to expect. They were so good! Sweet, moist, and just a hint of tomato flavor. He will definitely be making these again next year.