The Season Changed

The path between the scarlet runner beans; Deb Marshall photo

The bean tower, which is also a morning glory tower this summer, collapsed; I propped it up with another bamboo pole, but a chipmunk climbed it and it collapsed in a different direction. Now we’ve got it tied up, sort of, but that means you can’t walk past it without garroting yourself, if you go in one direction, or ducking under it all and scuttling from the other direction. 

One zucchini plant gave up in despair, at all the wetness, fell over onto its side and expired; but the other, which is doing battle with the tumbling bean tower, is doing just fine. Half the giant sunflowers are so heavy and tall they’ve tipped over and been caught by the fence that’s supposedly keeping the raspberries out of the pathway; now to use that path, you have to hunker down and swivel past the sunflowers and their resident, scolding chipmunks. The morning glories have finally found their glory, and besides adding to the weight on the bean tower, they’ve taken over a good part of the back fence and one of the compost bins, and are running about on the ground, as well.

Somewhere under all this is a compost bin; Deb Marshall photo

On either side of this jungle-like mess, winter squashes are sending out thick tendrils through nearby beds and across paths. Walking in the garden has become like running an obstacle course. I’m not complaining – well, I am – we really needed the rain, rain, rain we got, and things are totally bursting with growth. And the chipmunks are doing as much damage as possible, as fast as they can.

There are teethmarks on the zucchini and beans, and I’m patrolling the tomatoes daily and picking ones that are anywhere near ripe as soon as I spot them. So far the little buggers have only eaten one before I got to it. The part that hurts is that they’ll stand up on their hind feet and eat the tomato from below, leaving a perfect-looking empty shell behind. They munched on our one peach then tossed it onto the ground because it wasn’t quite ripe; the Husband and I washed it, cut off the chomped part, and ate the rest of the delicious, not-quite-ripe, peach. So there!

The path of the fallen sunflowers; Deb Marshall photo

One potato bag has given up the ghost; today, while it’s not raining, I decided to see what treasures were there. Several weeks ago an exploring hand produced two lovely purple potatoes; I hoped the rain, rain, rain hadn’t rotted, rotted, rotted the rest, and was thrilled to discover a basketful of beautiful pink and purple potatoes, more than I’ve ever had; and out of only one of the potato bags. I left the other alone, as the plants in that one are still very much alive. This has been a fine year for potatoes and onions – my onions are bigger and more numerous than ever before, very few succumbing to whatever it is that usually disappears have my sets. Even the Egyptian onion bulbs have gotten large, and the little sets at the top of the stalks are large and numerous.

The passionflower, out on the wart for its summer vacation, produced a flower the other day, and the kaffir lime has a baby lime or two, one almost the size of a ping-pong ball. The cucumber has produced enough fruit that I have a quart jar of cuke and onion slices in vinegar that refills as fast as we empty it. And I managed to produce a pretty decent beet soup last night, against all odds. I’d never eaten a beet soup I liked, but the beets were getting far ahead of me so I had to do something. Last spring I managed to turn too many green beans in the freezer into a decent green-bean soup – the trick was bacon and some cream and blending it all; and it turns out that the trick to decent beet soup is, besides blending it all into a gorgeous ruby-red thick liquid, tamarind powder, paprika, lots of garlic, onions, ginger root, and a little bone broth to add unctuousness. Good thing to discover, because the beets, even after making a pot of soup, are getting ahead of me, too.

August passionflower; Deb Marshall photo

The season has changed; it’s now the third season of five, which the Chinese call Late Summer. The light’s different, the bird song is different, the crickets sound different, even the garden smells different. Late Summer can last for two days or two months or longer – it’s the time of year when everything is at its fullest and ripest and sweetest. Certainly my garden is a sweet place to be, and I almost can smile at the fat chipmunks who are busily storing up for winter. The hummingbirds are very busy amongst the scarlet runner beans, which are growing long pods and still producing a mass of flowers, making Buzzy Boy slightly crazy in his attempts to protect both the three garden sites of runner beans and the two sugar-water feeders, located around the other side of the house, from hummer invaders. He buzzes me when I’m out in the garden too late, and sometimes sits atop the tomato cage on the wart and sings and fluffs and preens if I’m out under the tent to admire him. In just a few weeks the season change will send him south for the winter, and the day he leaves will be bittersweet.

Winter squash heading for the blueberry patch; Deb Marshall photo

I’d like to be able to say that getting into the garden and weeding out under the blueberries – a miserable job, only half finished, that leaves my hair full of detritus and my temper frayed as I do battle with invading brush, brambles, and vigorous weeds - has taken my mind off the death of my last Barkie Boy; but it hasn’t. Garden work mirrors the life and death cycles in its smaller, microcosmy way – do I yank out this beautiful weed which is going to seed and will cause me no end of trouble next spring if I don’t, or do I leave it and enjoy its beautiful flower that the bees and moths and butterflies are using for food; and if I pull these weeds, or these root vegetables, or the strawberry plants that have never borne fruit – who am I to end this burgeoning life? It’s one of the many tragedies of being human that we can think about the injustices in our ability to, and need to, end the life of other beings, either to survive or grant mercy. 

In my garden, one old raised bed holds the bodily remains of two beloved cats; another lies in the woods past the edge of the field, under the giant pine tree; another cat by the garage wall where she hunted mice in her old age, and yet another lies at the head of the driveway where he would sit and plan the destruction of the chipmunk nation. The First Barkie Boy’s ashes are by the front wall of the house where he most loved to lie and survey his domain; the area is thick with thyme and mint, now. Dad – part of him, anyway – resides under the giant, flourishing rhubarb plant he gave me at least three decades ago, one he split off his own plant, which is one he took from near an abandoned farm cellar hole he came across deep in the woods at least a decade earlier.

The tiger on his way to the catnip patch; Deb Marshall photo

The two Barkie Boys’ ashes are currently in tins on the table next to my couch. Roo has been there since last November; Abu joined him last week. At some point, maybe not until next spring, the Boys will go out  to mingle with the world again. Roo wanted to be buried in the couch, his favorite place in all the world, but Abu enjoyed the field. I think they will be happy together, and I think they may join the two kitties that Abu knew but Roo never met.

From there they can continue to protect my garden from deer, and something wonderful will grow above them all.

For the blog alone, 20 August 2018; herondragonwrites.blogspot.com

Green Love Lies Bleeding; Deb Marshall photo