Putting Summer Away in the Garden

 

October was a doleful month in the garden.  It started with promises of green tomatoes and winter squash and ended with slimy tomato vines and mud, mud, mud.  It's been so gloomy in the garden the last few weeks that I haven't had the drive to venture out even to peek at it.  My goal at the beginning of the month was to ready the garden for Fall and see what could be planted for a Fall/Winter harvest.  Today, when I was forced to venture out for salad greens, I almost cheered for the deer and slugs that had been munching my produce with an "at least someone's using it" attitude. 

What's going on with me?  Is it the rain?  Is it the chill?  Is it the approach of festive seasons that makes me want to focus my attention and energies indoors? 

I have been thinking of my garden even while I have been toiling indoors.  My freezer is full to the brim with squash and tomatoes, but my stash of frozen kale, blueberries, and green onions are nearly depleted.  I've been popping open jars of marinara, pickles, and applesauce and remembering all the warm sunshine and manual labor that went into those jars.  All the energy invested, then gone in an instant.  It almost seems an injustice.  Yet, how much more unjust would it be to let those jars go unopened and unused?  So I pop them liberally and use them generously keeping a thankful heart that I was able to get them "put up" in the first place. 

This is the ebb and flow of house-holding.  The summer drive to put up, the pantry getting full, the greedy search for every nook of freezer space, every half-full jar emptied, cleaned and re-filled until there is just no more space in your house or your heart for any more.  And then the pop, pop, pop as each precious jar of preserved summer is opened and used.  The shelves get more clear and the collection of empties grows.  I feel like Schindler at the end of Schindler's List, "I could have gotten one more!"  If I had only figured out how to do a bit more tomatoes, a bit more kale, a bit more...  Lessons for another year.  Those who have been doing this for years have quotas.  I need 10 quarts of applesauce, 10 quarts of pickles, and so on.  They know what they use, and they can more easily say when enough is enough. 

I need to take heart.  I need to strap on the mud boots and slog out there.  There is gardening to be done!  This is Oregon for heaven's sake!  Today, November 3rd, I rescued some lovely kale, spinach, celery, and arugula from the slugs and deer (and one cucumber beetle).  Not many other states can say the same.  It's been a wonderful year for gardening so far, and the Fall has just begun.  Common lady, get your head in the game!