Harvest Moon Tales

I love this time of year, when everything turns golden and brown, baked by a long summer season under the sun. My garden is still producing, but it is a race to the finish before everything gets frost bitten. That might happen sooner than I am ready for, if the predicted near-freezing temperatures come to pass tomorrow evening. I feel very suspicious about tonight's low, so outside in the garden it looks like the local KKK chapter threw a strip-tease party and left their clandestine sheets draped over my tomatoes, peppers, squash, and greens. I spent part of the late afternoon wandering around and gathering what was ready to harvest. The last of the green beans went into a bucket, followed by a couple of half-ripe tomatoes and a lonely poblano pepper. I dug some onions, but was repelled by giant prickly masses of emerging nettles. I'll go back and conquer them, armed with leather gloves, but for now the onions are safely hidden in the dirt. One more melon fell from it's vine, so in it came, along with a couple of sprigs of brocolli that decided to head up. Everywhere was the sound of bees, humming and buzzing and muttering their to-do lists and weaving a zig-zagging path around the remaining blooms. One of my roses is blooming like it is June again; my policy of benign neglect is apparently reaping its' late season rewards. When the sun settled to the west, I went around, closing up cold frames that have been open since late May and adjusting assorted sheets and tablecloths, wrapping them snugly around tomato stakes and squash plants. The rabbits are settled in for the night, munching their hay and cozy behind the closed dutch door, keeping the worst of the chill out but allowing the night in through windows ajar. The dogs are restless, listening to the neighborhood dogs barking out the nightly chatter of approaching deer and raccoons invading the corn field across the street. I love the comfort of this calm house as it wraps around me in these early evenings, when darkness falls before we're ready and makes us long for nights wrapped in quilts and warm cotton blankets, with nothing but a snoring cat and a good book between me and a good night's sleep. It seems like fall inspires me to slow down, savor the shortening days with their amber light, resigned against the winter that lies ahead.