Existential Autumn (or – all good things come to an end)

It’s been a bit of an existential few weeks in my life as of late, timed perfectly with the end-of-summer-garden phase the rains have brought with them. I’ve got photographs from last weekend’s harvest that I need to post yet, but suffice to say I have pulled a lot of pattypan squash, rhubarb, beets, carrots and the last of the beans out – and on Saturday afternoon after that day of miserable rain, I pulled most of my green tomatoes off the vines for fear of rot and blight. If it looked like it was going to get drier in the next couple days I would leave them on, but the forecast tells me that to leave my tomatoes out would most likely be all risk and no reward. I’m trying the apple-in-paper-bag trick and hoping they will ripen.

I’m thinking it might be time to pull up the storage beans as well and hang them to dry, though I’m going to wait until a dry day to do that. After they are husked I should have at least one good meal (maybe two) of black beans in there 🙂 Which doesn’t seem worth the space they take up in the garden all summer, does it? I went overboard this last summer with everything I wanted to grow – which has been awesome – but next year I think I’m going to focus more on what makes sense to grow in a small garden plot. At least until I can procure more space! As I think I’ve mentioned earlier – more garlic for sure!

It’s definitely garden clean-up time in any case, and I’m hoping for at least one not-too-wet day this weekend to focus on just that.

I haven’t mentioned here yet – but I am now also blogging at the Vancouver Fruit Tree Project periodically. At the moment the only post up is one that was previously posted here, but later this week there should be a post on canning apples which I will link to here when it appears. Additionally, I am working on getting advance copies of gardening and food security books so I can focus on doing more reviews in the fall in addition to writing about fall and winter projects (including workshops!)