Being in the garden

Here is a photo of the first quilt I ever made and it hangs in our bedroom now. It represents the vegetable garden from the top to bottom. The actual quilting was so awful, I recently reprocessed it as a wall hanging for our newly painted green bedroom. I made the panels a few years ago, one by one, as I traveled, and it represents my garden from top to bottom.

I am still there. I am still planting those same veggies and a lot more. I have learned so much since then. I know what will grow in our climate and I know about watering and fertilizing. I know, for example, that one should not grow tomatoes in the fall because as late bloomers, they will die in the December or January freezes.

Today I went to my favorite store, Farmers' Feed, where they had a cornucopia of seedlings. I bought all sorts - kolrabi, spinach, red cabbage and many onion sets. Tomorrow I will plant everything, poking holes to place them in the heavy hay mulch. The broccoli, beans, carrots and collards are doing well and the left over eggplants and peppers are really producing. (With thirteen eggplants on the table, the cook (Andy) made an exquisite eggplant casserole for dinner.

I am still thinking about having chickens, especially after reading the Susan Orlean article in last week's New Yorker. My family continues to be negative on this issue.

Everyone in our neighborhood has been absolutely manic about the first cool days of fall. We want to go out and DO. And I will go out tomorrow and plant those seedling vegetables in the cool of the morning.

We live in a terrible summer climate, but when the change comes, we know it's paradise for the next six months.