Time in a Bottle, Summer in a Jar

With each frost-free morning now a blessing, it is time to put our vegetable garden to bed, but slowly, slowly.  There is much to savor in that faded summer glory.

I brought the basil in, and will be freezing pesto for those sunless winter days when nothing but a taste of summer will suffice until the sun returns.  There are dried tomatoes in the pantry and several quarts of sauce in the deep freeze.  I am boiling the last of the peppermint for iced tea.  The onions and kale will remain in the ground well into the Fall, and new leaves will replace old compost before the snows settle in. 

Putting the garden to bed is like leaving the beach for the last time at the end of the season, and I can't quite bear to do it. Not with tomatoes still growing fat on the vine, and tender green spinach, and morning glories turning their pale blue yes toward the sun until the first hard frost lays them down.  Maybe tomorrow.  Maybe next week.  Each day until then a lingering taste of summer on the tongue.

Comments

[Rachel]

Found my way here via Dave Bonta at Via Negativa, and wanted to say that this post resonates for me a lot. We just brought in the last harvest of basil, too; our freezer is filled with pesto cubes...

[Miss Chestnuts]

I don't have any of the hybrid chestnuts, ashamed to say. Is the flavor thought to be close to the original?

I've been hoping that the Am. Ch. Foundation would produce a non-hybrid selection that is disease resistant, but that seems to be unlikely in my lifetime...

We had an "original" on our property that lived long enough to produce burrs (in fact it was Greenman Tim who pointed out to me that the burrs were chestnuts -- I had no idea!). But it succumbed to blight the season after we discovered the fruit.

A ripe pear in January sounds divine.

[Vertalio]

American/Chinese backcrosses from Alachua, Florida. Two trees, one more resistant than the other, but lots of nuts. I love them. Not the American Chestnut Foundation backcrosses, but for now they'll do.
Do you too have chestnuts?

And just after that the pears will start to fill the boxes I stack in the rootcellar (it came with the house), something like a winter Bartlett, but not. They last into the New Year, a real and juicy treat then.

[Miss Chestnuts]

After years of gardening, I've come to realize that my favorite crops are the ones I can eat in an unprocessed form long after the first frost: buttercup and acorn squash, brussel sprouts (send the kids out to pick 'em on Thanksgiving morning and forgot the string bean casserole), leeks, potatotes, onions, and garlic...

On the other hand, I'm almost done peeling and freezing my big old plum tomatoes. I just get giddy at the sight of my freezer filling up with all those bags that I'll dip into throughout the winter for sauce.

And by the way, Vertalio, what kind of chestnuts are you harvesting?

[Vertalio]

We moved into our house about 15 years ago, first frost that year on Sept 6. Last year it was in November. Take your time.
I'm making grape juice this weekend with an eye toward jelly later. Freezing corn on the cob. Starting to harvest the chestnuts soon, I hope, or we'll have even more squirrels.

[fuzzyturtle]

nah, I wait until mid october. I still manage to get a 'mater or two (or five or six) out of the garden.

but I do need to make room for that garlic.