Where Did The Summer Go?

I can't believe the whole summer has flown! We've had a marvelously full summer with travel and lots of wonderful things happening around the old place. Two family reunions, a couple of nice trips, and lots of stuff sold on ebay, as well as a summer full of good stuff from the garden. Tonight it got cold enough here that we lit a fire and relaxed over our glass of wine and talked about what we'd plant next summer, and here I went to post a picture of our first fire of the fall, only to find that my last posting was the first tomato of summer! Where did it all go?

The garden was amazing this summer, with all we could eat of greens, tomatoes, cantalope, watermelon, beautiful bountiful red sweet peppers, and just wonderful stuff. We even got ambitious enough to plant a fall crop when we'd pulled out some of the dead plants of summer. So even though I went out yesterday and harvested all the ripe tomatoes, that are right now simmering down into sauce with garlic and basil added, out in the garden we have radishes, three kinds of lettuces, garlic, peas, spinach and beets coming up new and fresh, for eating during these long, cool days of fall, and also a big patch of mixed greens.

What a bounty we have, and we're so glad to be here and able to work on it together. Our spectacular thing this fall is the castor bean plants. One plant is over 12 feet tall and still green and growing. I'll insert a picture of Jim as he stands by one of them, looking like he's being attacked and dragged off. It's amazing to see, and when his family was here, some of them wanted seeds.

We have great plans for next year's garden, and Jim's working now on a fence around it, to enclose it and give us a lot of space for climing trellises for cucumbers, peas, gourds, beans, or whatever else wants to climb.

So this evening it got cool enough to start a fire. We finished our dinner, rice pasta and polenta with fresh tomato sauce over it, and a great salad with feta cheese and other veggies. We also had a quick cracker bread made with manoic flour and parmesan cheese. Good stuff. We moved to our big soft chairs and lit a small fire built with small sticks from trimming the blueberry bushes in the spring. How relaxing, to finish our wine, watch out the window for the deer and talk about what we'll plant in next year's garden. A little chocolate goes well with it too. You've got to love the fire, it's just so very relaxing. And it all just makes me wonder, where'd the summer go?