Late Harvest

I was astonished last week when I visited my much-negleected community garden plot and found several quarts of ripe grape tomatoes, several large eggplants, and a huge shrub of a hot pepper plant growing happily as if it were mid-June. Just when I thought the whole space had been devoured by weeds and unruly Morning Glory plants I put in, I discovered a hidden treasure of late-season bounty.

The weather has been very bizarre and hot, and I have also neglected some of my Fall-time scheduled events like canning and drying and pickling because I seem to be in some type of denial about the coming Winter. Unlike nearly everyone I have talked to this past week, I do not like this heat and wish it would get cold and stay cold, so we can hurry up and get snow for Christmas! Either way, wearing shorts and sandals for a few days instead of fleece has somehow reset my body into Summer-mode, not cold-weather mode.

I picked as many tomatoes as I could carry home and froze them, along with roasting some of my eggplant and enjoyed the delicious sweetness of fresh-picked produce once more, as my opportunities to do so are going to be getting slimmer and slimmer in the next few weeks. I spent a few minutes just sitting in my garden plot, among the rotten tomatoes that had over-ripened and fell to the earth, becoming a buffet for a myriad of insects. I watched some leaves be relinquished from a nearby tree and watched a fat honeybee collect some late-season pollen from my perennial sage. I was happy to simply be there in my weedy garden, in the sunshine, taking a little time to slow down and truly experience the moment I was in before being swept up into the changing season.