Monday was Labor Day and no one had to work. Our nephew Ammon and his wife, Zizi, were still visiting and the Thayns were still here. We had a fun day together. Tabor and Josiah went fishing early that morning. When they got back, we had a big breakfast – pancakes, scrambled eggs, hash browns, and sourdough toast with butter and jam. After breakfast we walked up to the hollow to hunt for salamanders and pop touch-me-nots. I don’t know exactly when salamander hunting became a thing in our family, but we’ve been doing it since our children were small. The hollow is cool and shady and there are lots of flat stones along the road – a perfect place to find salamanders. It’s exciting to find them. We have several different kinds here, the spotted salamander (Ambystoma maculatum), slimy salamander (Plethodon glutinosus), and red-spotted newt (Notophthalmus viridescens). We always put them back where we found them.
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| Walking to the hollow. |
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| Hunting salamanders in the hollow. |
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| Salamanders. |
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| Three kinds of salamander we see here: spotted, slimy, and red-spotted newt. |
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| Florence discovering salamanders. |
As for popping touch-me-nots (the explosive seed pods of spotted jewelweed, Impatiens capensis), that goes back to my childhood. When we used to visit my Aunts Esther and Eleanor here, we always took walks to the hollow to do that. There are hundreds of touch-me-not plants growing in the hollow and I like to think I’ve had something to do with their abundance. We see to it that they continue to flourish there by popping and spreading their seeds.
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| Touch-me-not flower and seed pod (not my photos). |
When we got back from our walk, Stacey took Tabor, Rachel, Ammon, and Zizi on an Amish run to do some shopping. When they returned, Ammon and Zizi left to continue their trip to New York City. We were sad to see them go. Their visit was too short. The Thayns stayed until after dinner and then they left for home.
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| Good-bye to Ammon and Zizi. |
The next few days were busy. I was called into school on Tuesday. That afternoon when I got home, I mowed the lawn. Usually by this point in the year, I’d only be mowing once every ten days or so, but we’ve had a wet summer and the grass is still growing rampantly and I have to mow twice a week. On Wednesday Josiah and I were both home and we spent the day in my vegetable garden. We pulled out the spent zucchini and cucumber vines, took out the wire supports, pulled up the jungle of weeds that had taken over that corner of the garden, and then tilled. That’s one small part of the garden that’s almost ready for its winter sleep. I still have a lot more to do. And now I won’t have Josiah here to help me.
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| Tilling in the vegetable garden. |
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| All cleaned up. |
Josiah left on Thursday to return to school in Idaho. Miriam drove him up to Buffalo and he flew west again. I was sorry to see him go. I always am. It was great having him home for a few weeks. I loved having his help with my projects. I love it that he loves to come home whenever he can. He has two semesters to go for his bachelors of science degree with a major in physics. We won’t see him again until Christmastime. I don’t want to think about that right now.
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| Good-bye to Josiah. |
The gardening year is winding down. Although many parts of the flowerbeds still look good, there are lots of gaps now that won’t be filled until next spring’s bulbs come up. Now I’m not just pulling up weeds, but also plants that I’ve cared for all summer that are done. I like cleaning up the garden, especially when the days are still warm and sunny. As I move through each section of the long border and the other flowerbeds around the yard, I make an assessment of what was good, what was bad, what things I will keep the same and what I will change next year. I have a running list of plants that I will grow again, those I’ve never grown that I plan to introduce to the garden next year, and this year’s failures that I will not grow again.
The zinnias are beautiful right now and I regret that I did not plant more of them. My heavenly blue morning glory vines are very leafy, but they still haven’t bloomed and I wonder if they ever will. Plants that did well that I’ll grow more of next year include helenium, scabious, gladiolus, China asters, and rose campion. Plants that need some reining in are the spiderwort (Tradescantia) and obedient plant (Physostegia virginiana) that have spread into areas where I don’t want them. And I will grow more lilies. Is it possible to have too many lilies? I don’t think so.
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| Some of my zinnias. |
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| My leafy, flowerless morning glory. |
Fall bulb catalogs have been arriving in the mail. I devour them, marking with a highlighter the flowers that interest me – tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, crocuses, lilies, fritillaries, alliums! There are so many! There is an old idiom for food that says “your eyes are bigger than your stomach.” When it comes to bulb catalogs, my eyes are bigger than my garden and my budget. There is no way I could possibly fit or afford all the bulbs that I highlight in the catalogs. But I mark things and then compare them and eliminate and add until I get something reasonable (if a bit disappointing) to order. Planting bulbs in the fall is one of my most loved garden jobs. It is my way of affirming that spring will come again even while the growing world is shutting down. Knowing those bulbs are there sleeping under the earth makes me happy and tempers the gloom of winter a bit.
Speaking of bulbs, I thought last week that it was about time that my colchicums appeared. They grow leaves in the spring that die back in the summer and then in the fall they send up their beautiful flowers – big pink blossoms, that seem to erupt from the earth. But I realized that I had plants growing where the colchicums should be, dahlias and portulaca that I planted late to cover a bare spot of ground. I pulled them up and there, rising from the soil, were the colchicum buds. They were small and pale from lack of sunshine, but with the other plants gone, they will quickly color up and open. They are one of the last events of my gardening year, a very pretty conclusion to the flowering season.
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| Colchicum buds. |
The vegetable garden is also winding down. The tomatoes have blight now and their days are numbered. We will let as many of them ripen for as long as we can. There are lots of peppers still on the plants, but the nights are getting cool and they will soon be finished. The onion harvest is almost over. Only part of the long onion row out in the big garden remains to be pulled. We are out of space for curing them so I hope they hold on until we trim and store the ones we’ve already pulled. We had a mighty harvest. There are beets and chard still to be processed. The runner beans are still green so it will be a while before we harvest them. Yesterday I cleaned and sorted potatoes and put them in storage in the cellar. Stacey grated and froze a bucketful of the ones that got stabbed during harvesting. Miriam did a batch of basil and carrots in the dehydrator. I canned another five quarts of tomato sauce. I love harvest time.
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| Blighted tomato vines. |
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| A picking of peppers. |
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| Eggplants. |
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| Onions curing in the pavilion. |
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| Red onions, the prettiest vegetable I grow. |
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| Late season lettuce. |
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| Beets and chard. |
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| Potatoes ready to go down cellar. |
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| Basil and carrots ready for the dehydrator. |
Out in the orchard, the chestnut crab apples are ripe. They are little (actually big for a crab apple, but small for an apple), crunchy, and sweet. I love to carry a few in my pockets and munch on them while I work in the garden. The other mid and late season apples are growing plump. We will begin picking in earnest in two weeks and then keep on picking through October. I’m looking forward to applesauce and cider.
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| Chestnut crab apples. |
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| My sweet sixteen apple tree loaded with fruit. |
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| Some of my apple varieties: Ashmead's Kernal, Frostbite, Golden Russet, Honeycrisp, Sweet Sixteen, Roxbury Russet, Chestnut Crab Apple, Oxford Black, Bosc Pear. |
Yesterday was 9/11, a day I remember vividly and always will. Last night we began watching the National Geographic documentary 9/11: One Day in America. It covers the events of that day using archival footage and interviews with eyewitnesses and survivors. There are six episodes and we have only watched the first two so far. We’ll watch the rest tonight. It is an amazing, heart wrenching documentary. I recommend it.
We are home from church. We’ve had lunch – fried egg and grilled cheese sandwiches on Miriam’s sourdough bread, and a salad. It was delicious. We’ve been picking a lot of raspberries and I’ve begged Miriam to make some vanilla ice cream and raspberry sauce for a Sabbath treat.
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| Raspberries we picked yesterday. |
This coming weekend we are going down to the Thayn’s house. We will be celebrating Tosh and Hazel’s birthdays (the 17th and 20th respectively). So the Howes, the Fosters, and the Thayns will all be together. Saturday is also the Highland Games in Ligonier and we will be going to that to see caber tossing, harping, dancing, and bagpiping. It will be a fun weekend and I’ll tell you all about it next week. Because we won’t be home again until Sunday night, the Journal will be a little late next Sunday.
Dan
