Playing Harvest Hooky
The Garden:
The entrance is blocked with overgrown rows … I walk on cucumbers and cherry tomatoes. ~ Colleen
I should be in the garden. There’s basil to pick for making pesto, onions to braid, and Japanese beetles to kill. All the corn comes in at once. I know it’s ripe when the ear worms and corn borers arrive. If I don’t harvest it for eating now, they will. They’re already getting fat.
Too soon, the lushness of July is over. So is the rush of activities; weddings, graduations, re-unions, and vacations. By August my garden looks haggard and bug-infested. By mid-August reality sets in. Kids shopping for notebooks and new school clothes know their summer days are numbered. So do I. Soon I’ll have to put on shoes. My husband’s chainsaw has already been started up.
There’s a melancholy feeling to August that makes me want to spend the day photographing butterflies, as if storing their images before they disappear. I’d like to go to the pool, immerse myself its Caribbean blue illusion, and then stretch out on a lounge chair in the sun and read.
But there’s work to be done. There are seeds to save, and some to plant for a cold weather crop. Red ripe tomatoes are falling to the ground. My potatoes are popping up from their mounds, as if to say “why have children if you’re not going to raise them?”
“Have you ever tried to dig potatoes in soil this dry? We need rain,” I mutter to myself, as I strain to pull up the stalk of a well-established weed that has gone to seed.
Just then a sherbet-green butterfly breezes by, causing my head to turn. My eyes follow, to where it lands, on a hanging basket of magenta petunias, long and leggy this time of year.
The screen door slams. The chase is on.
“Where’s my camera?” I shout.
August 8th, 2006 11:52 pm
Your garden is so beautiful and certainly you can see the fruits of your labour (literally!) Makes me wish i didn’t kill any plant that crosses my path. Here from Michele’s
August 9th, 2006 12:38 am
Beautiful writing on a great subject. Get your copy of Charlotte’s Web and reread the chapter called “Crickets.”
There! I just compared you to E.B White. No greater love! ~,:^)
August 9th, 2006 6:54 am
Our tomatoes are just beginning to turn red. We’ve eaten exactly one and the chipmunks a few. The hornworms have arrived also. Remember those ugly buggers?
Great post, as usual.
August 9th, 2006 8:07 am
Yum…All that hard work pays off when you get to eat fresh, free from chemicals veggies…
We have had lots of butterflies here as well…
August 9th, 2006 8:52 am
For some reason, we don’t get tomato hornworms. I’ve never seen one here.
I didn’t get my camera in time to shoot the sherbet green butterfly. I tried to match up a photo of one online and didn’t have much luck. The closest I could find was an image of a glow in the dark one called Giant Firefly and reference to the same in a poem.
I’ve never read Charlotte’s Web. I don’t know what’ wrong with me. Was it because my boy were more into Lord of the Rings, Mossflower, and the likes? I’ll get with the program, though. I promise!
August 9th, 2006 10:09 am
Great entry evoking that melancholy that I used to feel in August living in New England….not so here in Florida. Not until late October anyway.
Your veggies look yummy, especially that corn.
August 9th, 2006 10:30 am
Oh, you’re so lucky! How I miss the lushness of a Virginia garden. (6 of 20)
August 9th, 2006 12:10 pm
hmm yes… i need to go tend my balcony babies and stop staring at butterflies too 🙂
beautiful.
August 9th, 2006 2:11 pm
It might have been one of those Luna Moths, really – no joke – they are bright sherbert green!
We are heading that way to get the bike today, at some point, I’ll call before I come.
August 9th, 2006 2:37 pm
We are going to drive ourselves crazy Colleen, critter chasing!
Is everyone melancholy today? I think my basil needs harvesting but it smells so nice I just keep letting it grow out on the patio. I also am noticing that some of my flowers (that weeks ago were flush) now look yucky. There time ran well and it appears I need to start thinking about putting mums in there place! Where has the time gone???
I love your garden!
August 9th, 2006 3:32 pm
I don’t think it was a luna moth because it was smaller and didn’t have the pointed end on the wings.
Is your basil going to seed, making flowers, Deana? If so, pick them off to hold it off. If you cut your basil to harvest, it will grow back.
Sometimes I hang them upside down from my rafters till it dries and then crumble it up and put it in a jar. Just like the stuff you buy in the store.
August 9th, 2006 6:33 pm
What a really cute post…….I just don’t want the summer to end and this has some thoughts of it.
August 9th, 2006 6:33 pm
Down here the ants were all over our corn. (Heck, we were thrilled we could grow corn at all in this sandy soil.) Brings back memories of the community garden I belonged to for 5 years in Cambridge, and the bustle of “work day.” I love how the crops and trees frame your house — it’s an idyllic picture.
August 9th, 2006 7:52 pm
I have lost this summer with the house building and the move. I am sad, and looking forward to enjoying next summer. But, then again, fall is my favorite season! The glass is always half full.
August 9th, 2006 8:04 pm
I love your reference to your “potato babies” and can’t wait to get back to NY to share your posts with my daughter, Jody. She & husband live the same life style as you do and I know they will relate. I head that way tonight from Alaska so will keep in touch.
All the best…….
August 9th, 2006 9:14 pm
Colleen I will see you back her Sunday I hope. If I find any internet I will check things out here in Floyd and Mayberry!
I left you a music link tonight that I want you to try…see if you like the guy! All best, Deana
August 9th, 2006 11:29 pm
I think the tomatoes will wait while you capture the butterflies (on film), won’t they? My neighbor brought me 18 tomatoes yesterday, and she still had a lot to keep. It’s nice having a neighbor with a garden!!
August 10th, 2006 12:39 pm
Can’t wait to see the butterfly pic!
August 10th, 2006 7:30 pm
The squirrels got into my tomatoes but I have four fairytale pumpkins growing. Yeah!