ides of october

Leaves are falling, wind is blowing, our compost pile is overflowing.

We raked leaves today, piling all of them up, from our front and back yards into one huge pile, taller than either of the kids, and let them jump into it, slide into it from their play slide, bury themselves in leaves.  I forget how much I loved jumping into leaves and getting lost in leaf piles that seemed so so big when I was so little.



There was a little chill of winter in the air this morning when we first left the house.  October is here- really here.  Last week didn't feel that way-- hot, dry, and very weird.  Nice to have a little bit of summer before the winter hits, but it was dry and hot in a way that seemed unusual for October.  I think we broke a high temperature record or two in the process.

It's a beautiful October otherwise, with lots of good fall colors on the city streets.  Our neighborhood has a lot of maples, and there's a street not far from us lined with sugar maples which just blaze this time of year.  We walk a little stretch of it on the way home from preschool, and inside I'm a bit thankful that we live in a climate where the seasons change, even as extremely as they do.

 I noticed today that many of the gardeners at our community garden have already cleared their plots and are turning over the soil, leaving blank spaces in the patchwork.

'Not yet!' I want to say.  This is the best part of the gardening year.  Where you don't have to pull weeds anymore, and the mosquitoes and japanese beetles are long gone, and the tomatoes keep on coming, and there's still carrots to pull, and the kale will keep coming for a month or two.  It isn't time to cut it all down just yet.

But I can understand if people are tired.  It has been a hard year for gardeners.  Really, it's been a hard year for everyone, whether or not they garden.

Some other garden blogs are going dormant for the winter.  I wonder if mine should, but I don't want to.  I enjoy this too much.  Even if there aren't many readers (and there aren't).

kale & squash

I'd like the eighth acre farm to be more like a kale patch than basil.  Sure, the basil smells nice and is makes just about everything you pair it with taste good- but kale is a survivor.  Kale is a Minnesotan- enduring through the first few snowstorms of November and December before finally succumbing (and even then, not totally) to the sub-zero frosts of January.

I respect kale for that.  It's not a sexy herb like basil, but it endures.  And endurance, in the age of peak everything, may be the most respectable quality there is.


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daddy- what kind  of pizza do you want?

I promised to tell my personal horror story involving the largest bank in the US last time, and I would, but frankly, I'm tired and feeling a bit lazy and will save it for another time.  I'm glad to see the protestors in all of the various cities holding the banks and 'investment' companies accountable for all the fraud and corruption and self-enrichment of the last who-knows-how-many years. 

Let them all eat cake.  I will eat carrots from my garden.  I may even pickle some this week (carrots- not stockbrokers), with hot peppers from my community garden plot.