The vespertine

I first started datura from seed for the garden at the Summerhouse, a restaurant my boyfriend, Matt, was then an owner/chef at. The trumpet-shaped flowers unfurl in the evening, when late diners enjoy a dusky supper on the patio, or when kitchen staff unwinds at the firepit in the after-hours.

That first year's datura seedlings were dispersed between my own garden, my mother's, and the restaurant's. Every year thereafter, seedlings germinate in the garden of their own accord. This one sprung from the edge of Mom's compost pile, and didn't begin blooming until just before frost.

A bouquet was composed

I told Matt he had to be the first to look out the window this morning. If it had frosted, I was not going to get out of bed to see the crystal-rimed wreckage of the world I once knew, loved, and frolicked in. I was not going to get up today, tomorrow, or ever again until my doom and gloom had come full circle and things actually seemed more bleak on the dark side of the down comforter.

Matt looked out the window and gave a non-committal report, something like, "well a little bit maybe or not at all a tad, shall we have scrambled eggs now?"

Clearly I was going to have to do the deed myself, or risk rotting under the blankets for no reason at all. So I stumped out of bed and down the steps and into the garden.

And infuriatingly, Matt was right. It had frosted... Well, a little bit - maybe. Or not at all. A tad?

The morning glory leaves were slumped and black and wet looking. But as the day bloomed and the dew wore off, nothing important had been damaged. My two swallowtail caterpillars went all the way from inanimate to lethargic in the course of a few short hours, which meant that they weren't dead, which made me happy.

I spent the rest of the day sort of ricocheting in slow motion around the garden, becoming absorbed in a task for a moment and then inexplicably propelled away and in a diagonal direction, to smack into something more engrossing down the line a bit. So most of the tomatillos were harvested, and some of the jalapenos, tomatoes, and eggplants. Cotton blossoms were admired. Tobacco budworms were plucked and flicked. The little lemon tree was carted back outside for pollination purposes. And a bouquet was composed.

Black swallowtail on a bruised day

It stopped raining for a bit, and I wanted to be free from the house, to feel the autumn air, to take pictures of the dill, and to sniff it...

And I noticed amongst the drops someone cold, and clinging.

And then another someone.

Black swallowtail caterpillar on dill

The rain gauge runneth over

Rain: sweet, clean, thrumming saturation. I've lost track of inches, but we're well past five this last week.

'Kolibri' kohlrabi

While the tomatoes and eggplants seem small and hard, stubborn and scowling, others in the garden are positively glowing in this cold, wet weather. We direct-seeded kohlrabi in July, and they are now tennis-ball sized, crisp, sweet, turnipy and tender. Much improved over the earlier batch which was sown indoors and set out in the spring - those languished. Next year I plan to direct seed all the brassicas (cauliflower, cabbage, kohlrabi, broccoli) earlier (end of March), and then some of them again in July, so that they're never trying to size up in the hottest part of the summer.

Carrots, July-sown for fall harvest

It has been a beautiful rain - teeming at times, misting at others - always perfectly vertical. And in it, the carrots seem to be muscling each other about, shoulder-to-shoulder-to-shoulder. Do they make a popping sound as they plump... or is that them, squealing in expansion?

Arugula, white Russian kale, and bronze fennel for salad tonight

The cold frame beds are their own lush little arugula pastures. There is no green I like better, which is a good thing, because nothing else germinated quite so well. There will be chard, lettuce, upland cress, mustard and baby kale to cut eventually, but not in great bowl-topping mounds like the arugula.

Candy-Striped Leafhopper

This is Graphocephala coccinea, the candy-striped leafhopper, wearing its amazing technicolor dreamcoat (click to enlarge).

Matt found it in the mustard greens whilst cutting salad mix for dinner. When I pointed the camera at it, it stuck that orange spike out its back end and squirted fluid!!! This caused me to squeal with delight.

You can find a more informational report on this insect at Urban Wildlife Guide.

An Underwater Desert

My mother is a painter and a gardener, so it makes sense that her plantings have an artist's eye. I can't really do this year's doorway composition justice with my photos, but it is my favorite garden arrangement of the season, so I wanted to share it anyway.

Above, there is a wide, squat pot just southwest of center... It is stuffed with succulents my mom picked up in the spring. To me, they look like sea anemones that are cactuses. The mat underneath is golden moneywort (Lysimachia nummularia 'Aurea').

Below, the zinnias in the background are terracotta colored when they open, fading to sun-bleached sand when they are spent.

This astounding purple fellow has little cups that hold water.

Sometimes people ask if the saddle shoes were mine when I was small. They weren't. I was born to be woods-wild, so white would never do.

You can only see its leaves in the first picture, but this hot red hibiscus unfurls a flower or two each morning.

Tomatoes. Lots!

It's been a good year for tomatoes. Despite the dry, we had a hefty haul, and this is the first season in a few that we haven't had some sort of blight affliction.

That's a picture of our second big picking off the six plants in our city garden (mid-August). I processed those into sauce, using my mom's old Victorio strainer. And was it ever a tedious endeavor. Remind me to rein us in next year and stick to two beefsteak heirlooms, for rushed lunches.

Impatient goes hand in hand with stubborn, and I claim expertise in both. Here's a picture of me, the last time I used the Victorio.

It will be another 28 years before I'll think the Victorio is a good idea again, and by then, I'll have unloaded it at a garage sale. Or heaved it down a mine shaft, Scranton style.

Overreacting to the amount of work that little pile of tomatoes was, you say? Indeed. This isn't a food blog, after all. Those beefsteaks are mostly water, and after the wall-splattering event of churning them through that contraption, and the sticky floor, thrice mopped, you still have to cook them down into a disappointingly small pot of sauce. Such a little dribble! You could never survive the winter on it.

The first batch of tomatoes I "processed" was whole fruits thrown in freezer bags, skins and cores and dirty bits intact. The second batch was as detailed, above. The third batch was a giant five-dollar-farmers-market sack of Romas, roasted in a pan with garlic, then buzzed up with fistfuls of herbs and the immersion blender. For all you lazy homesteaders out there, I'll tell you: that's the way to go. If your significant other, who happens to be a former chef, scowls at the idea of skins-left-on, just tell him you have way more important things to do. Like drink wine on the back porch. Drink whiskey on the back porch. Draw pictures, dance dances, drink cider.

I refuse to undertake any task at all that requires more than three hours to complete, starting RIGHT NOW.

But it only takes ten minutes to pick clean the cherry and paste tomatoes in our country garden. Then I wash them, cut them in half, and spread them on a sheet pan to dry in the baker's big ovens, after a night's bake. They turn into rubies that are better than jewels, because you get to eat them. This is the kind of kitchen labor I can get behind.