The End of Things

It's arrived.

Finally.

The end.

Okay, maybe that's a little dramatic, and not entirely accurate.

A view of our garden, shot a couple of weeks ago. The big brown empty spot is where we harvested the potatoes a couple of weeks ago.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 I'm talking about the end of summer. As I publish this, a glance at the calendar will tell you we have another 32 days of summer, according to the Gregorian calendar. (I've read that meteorologists actually consider Sept. 1 the start of autumn, but maybe we'll talk about that another time).

Every year, usually some time in the first half of August, we get a day where the whether feels just a little autumn-like. Maybe it's a breeze that's cooler than typical summer wind; perhaps it's the hint of a chill in the night; or even on a hot day the air feels less humid, crisper, more like a warm day in fall rather than a sweltering summer day.

Whenever that first day comes, it's suddenly as if summer is winding down, that autumn with its changing leaves and cool nights and smoky air from burning leaf and brush piles is about to commence.

Oftentimes after that first day or two of autumn hinting at its arrival, summer comes back with a vengeance – the days grow humid again, the nights don't cool off much, and you find yourself wanting that fall-like weather even more.

As I write this it's been nine days since those first hints of fall crept into the air-- it was a Sunday, my wife and I had just returned from our bi-weekly torture march through the grocery store loading up a fortnight's worth food and stuff, and after unloading all the groceries I just stood outside for a while, enjoying the feel of the air. Later that evening we spent an hour or so sitting outside as the sun set and the day faded into night.

I generally say autumn is my favorite time of year. I love the feel of the air, the cool of the nights, the colors – yes, even the brown colors of the dead leaves once they begin falling to the ground. And Halloween is one of my favorite holidays even though, I suppose, it's not an official holiday.

But this year I'm not so sure I'm ready.

As I grow older, I can't help but see summer winding down as the first steps toward winter, when the world is cold and dead and occasionally a bit dreary. There are all sorts of poems and stories and essays likening the autumn to the final years of middle age for people, with the cold hard winter of one's final years just around the corner, so I won't try to say the same thing here.

What I will say is my reticence to welcome fall is far more practical.

My wife and I enjoy gardening, and we have for years done the usual fare – tomatoes, peppers, zucchini and squash, along with decorative gourds and even a few pumpkins. Some years we try a few cantaloupes or watermelons.

Last year, we experimented a little bit. We grew some kale, a few carrots, cauliflower, Swiss chard, and late in the summer we planted some lettuce and spinach, along with a few turnips and rutabagas.

They were great. Stephanie, my wife (better described as The Chief, the Household CEO, or Head Honcho) wasn't so fond of the cauliflower, so we dumped that from this year's garden plans, but we decided to try a few new items this year.

We scrapped the gourds and pumpkins, cut back a bit on the tomatoes, peppers, and vining plants, and went hog wild with lettuce, kale, arugula, and Swiss chard. We put most of those in raised bed gardens this year. For the main portion of the garden, to give the soil a break from the usual plants, we sowed black beans, white Cannellini beans, corn (that was a bit of an accident), some peas, and on a last-minute lark, some potatoes, along with a half-dozen purple cabbage plants.

The corn we had no intention of growing, but a seed company accidentally sent those to us (and didn't want them back once I told them), so we squared off a corner of the garden and put those in.

Three days ago, we realized some of those corn plants were ready – we ended up with nearly three dozen full, thick ears of super-sweet corn, and nearly that much still growing.

Earlier this summer we pulled nearly 40 pounds of potatoes from the ground, the harvest from about 9 pounds of seed potatoes. I've since read that's not necessarily a great yield, but we bought them on a spur of the moment decision, threw them in the ground and didn't do any feeding or fertilizing. So I'm happy with that yield and hopefully we can do better next year.

We're still a few weeks away from harvesting the beans.

All of this brings me back to my point of not necessarily being ready for autumn to set in. What we learned last year is there's plenty of late-season plants to put in the garden in August. I've put out turnips and rutabagas, Stephanie pulled up the old dying vine plants and has replaced them with new cucumber and zucchini seeds. We've also done a second planting for lettuce and spinach and peas.

And that's what brings me back around to saying I'm not so sure I'm ready for autumn to kick in just yet. I'd like a little more summer-weather growing season. Turns out, even here in the mountains of Southwest Virginia, with its short growing season, you can still get two full plantings in – one for summer harvest and another for fall harvest, if you just switch things up a bit, if you're willing to try new things and work a little longer into the autumn, you can pack a lot more plants into the same little plot of land. And some of those fall crops will store up a lot longer through the winter than the more fragile summer plants.

I suppose that could almost be a metaphor for life. Autumn might very well be the final years of middle age and the first glimpse into the geezer years, but if you're willing to try new things, slip outside your comfort zone, could be the autumn years just might be the best of all.