The garden is over run with weeds, leaves are powdery mildew speckled, and well the whole of it is absolutely out of control.  I have only stepped into the garden the last few weeks to attempt to snag out the beans and cucs and squash, or some herbs and such.  There has been little to no actual “work”, and I expected that.  I did.  But, the dreaming for next year has begun already.  I envision decking out the entire perimeter of the garden with pole beans and following suit with a circular set up for the rest.  And because we desperately need to fell some trees to allow some more sunshine in, I am thinking of placing some of the more sun thirsty of the vegetables, and the more space consuming ones too… (for example the pumpkins that are literally dripping form our fence) in the pasture below.  But for now, it is neat to watch things going to seed, looking like Dr. Suess illustrations, and its wonderful to see the excitement on the boys faces when I tell them to go harvest ALL THE THINGS!  Those purple cosmic carrots they have carted in, dragging dirt all over the place, have made some pretty out of this world soup too let me tell you… (oh please laugh at my lame pun).   And the boys eat it like its ice cream, so that alone is worth the work.

The only real task we have accomplished is to harvest and ferment all the cabbage then replace it with some late crop lettuce and spinach.  When the little sprouts showed their squiggly faces the excitement of spring jumped all around me again.  There is something very magical about seeing seeds turn into plants.

Oh the garden… it is hard to believe I am figuring out the proper way to close up shop already.   The nights and mornings have dipped into the forties, we have been hunting down wood through out the forest to drag up to the woodpile, and I even had to take out socks to warm my little boys toes this morning…  autumn is surely approaching.  How is your garden?