September at Its Best

One of my fancy sunflowers.

September is behaving normally. The days are cooling down. Even the warm days have a chilly edge to them when the sun isn’t shining directly. And the nights now are downright chilly. Some years we get one last hot spell in September, but they seem to be getting rarer. The way things are going so far, I don’t think we’ll get one this year.

Sunrise Monday.

Monday was Labor Day and for us it was a day of labor. Stacey didn’t go to work, so she and I spent the day harvesting and processing produce from the garden. We sliced, and ground up cucumbers, onions and peppers and started another batch of relish. I picked more onions and peppers and cilantro and Stacey made a batch of sofrito to freeze dry. She also made another batch of applesauce. But she spent most of the day picking eggplant and making it into eggplant parmesan to freeze dry. She peeled it, brined it to take away the bitterness, breaded and fried it, and then froze it. I picked a huge batch of basil and she also made and froze a batch of pesto. It was a good, productive day.

Stacey frying eggplant.

The weather on Monday was beautiful, perfect September weather. I was back and forth from the garden most of the day bringing in things to process. I spent a half hour picking raspberries. The red raspberries are ripening fast. Every day there are more. The yellow raspberries are just starting to ripen. I planted yellow raspberries because my Aunt Eleanor told me once that her mother, my great-grandmother Anna May Stevens Howe, liked to keep a jar of canned yellow raspberries on her kitchen windowsill because she liked to see the sun shine through them. I thought that was a lovely thing to do, so I planted yellow raspberries. In addition to being pretty, they are delicious.

Red raspberries.

Yellow raspberries.

My great-grandmother Anna May Stevens Howe.

Toward evening on Monday, the weather service issued a frost advisory. It seemed impossible that, after such a lovely day, it was going to get cold enough to bring us frost. But I know from long experience that if there is going to be frost anywhere in the region, it will happen here in Gold. We played it safe and picked as many tomatoes, bell peppers, and jalapenos as we could and brought them onto the back porch. We’d cleaned off the back porch earlier in the day, which was a good thing. There were a few almost ripe tomatoes, but most of them were not ripe. We will try to get them all to ripen over the next weeks. I also brought all my tenderest potted plants in from the back porch steps. And I picked bouquets of dahlias and a few gladiolus, thinking that in the morning the plants would be frostbitten.

Tomatoes and peppers on the back porch.

Bouquets on the eve of frost.

When I woke up Tuesday morning, it was 33° according to my weather monitor that uses a thermometer set in the garden near the house. Thirty-three is one degree too warm for things to freeze, but I didn’t take much comfort in that because it’s always colder out away from the house and the big trees. As soon as it started to get light, I went out to inspect the gardens. Sure enough, out past the big garden I found frost on the lawn by the big barn. The garden plants were spared, and I was relieved, but I know it won’t last much longer.

Our first frost.

Tuesday morning.

Tuesday morning, while waiting for the chill to burn off, I finished making the relish. I canned fourteen pints. We are done with relish now. There are no cucumbers left. I spent that afternoon cleaning out flowerbeds. This is the month when I prepare the gardens for their winter sleep. It is sad and satisfying work. I feel a pang of sadness as I clear away the once glorious, now decrepit flowers. But I like making things tidy again with all the spent plants cleared away.

It was 37° on Wednesday morning when I went out. It makes me cringe to step outside and see my breath. I decided it was time to switch to a heavier jacket when I do the morning chores. That’s a big mental step for me, an admission that things are not going to get warmer again for a long time. Now when I come in from my morning chores, I have to turn on the electric heater by my desk to warm my feet and hands. I haven’t given in to wearing gloves yet. That will happen soon, too soon.

The dahlia row out in the big garden.

Out in the big garden, the pigs are getting big. They have an insatiable appetite, which I suppose is a good thing considering where they are ultimately headed. It’s kind of satisfying to watch them gobble down their food. They are very messy eaters. They eat like proverbial pigs with their faces smashed down into the food and their feet in the trough, shoving and pushing, knocking food all over the place. When they aren’t eating, they spend their time lounging in their wallow. There’s an old saying “it’s a dog’s life,” meaning a carefree and easy life, but except for its shorter duration and grisly conclusion, I think a pig’s life – eating to get as fat as you can as fast as you can and mud baths all day – tops it.

The pigs.

Wednesday was another lovely day. I wanted to be outside all day, but I felt the need to work on tomatoes. After all the time spent planting and tending them, I hate to see any of them go to waste. So I sorted through the ones on the back porch and selected the ripest ones and canned a batch of salsa. That took me until 1:00. When that was done, I went out and spent the rest of the day in the garden.

Canning salsa on Wednesday.

Eight pints of salsa finished.

I’ve been keeping my eye on the pumpkin patch. The vines are dying back and the pumpkins are ripening. I only grew three varieties this year – Howden, which is a larger type for decoration, Spookie, a white variety also for decoration, and Winter Luxury, a smaller pumpkin and the best of all the eating pumpkins. I’m watching for the signs that they are ready to pick – a hard rind, dried up stem, and a hollow sound when I thump them. It’s a race to get them in before a heavy frost or a hard freeze damages them. There are seven big Howdens, three Spookies, and a dozen Winter Luxurys waiting to be harvested.

The pumpkin patch.

I started some sauerkraut on Thursday. It was a sad operation. Our cabbages are pitiful this year. Last year the average head weighed in at five pounds. This year they are averaging just one pound. And they are of very poor quality, most of them split, with lots of rotten spots. None of our brassicas performed well this year – broccoli, cauliflower, and especially cabbage. So I cut ten heads of cabbage and chopped them for kraut. I was planning to do a five gallon bucket, but there was so little cabbage left when I finished cleaning them and cutting them, that I decided to use my quart size fermentation jars instead. Three quarts is not much kraut. If I processed every cabbage left in the garden, I might be able to fill half a five gallon bucket. Maybe I will try that this week.

Three quarts of sauerkraut started.

Friday I spent most of the morning working in my raised bed vegetable garden near the house. There are seven beds. Everything has been harvested in five of them. All that’s left are a bed of carrots and a bed of beets. I will harvest them this week. I cleaned out the empty beds and turned the soil. When the leaves fall, I will grind them up and fill all the raised beds with them so they can rot over the winter. That afternoon, I borrowed two brush hogs from Stacey’s work and set about mowing down everything too tough for our regular mower. I started with the smaller brush hog and worked on mowing the orchard where the grass is three feet tall and brown. I didn’t finish. I will do that tomorrow. Then I will use the bigger brush hog to mow down the large stands of sunchokes in various parts of the yard. The sunchokes are eight feet tall and they have encroached even further into unwanted places. It’s hard work, even with these powerful machines.

Yesterday we went to the temple. A sister in our branch went through for the first time. Stacey drove her up early in the morning. Hannah and I drove up a little later. It was a nice experience, but a long time in the car. We were gone most of the day and it was a rainy day, so I did nothing at home except minimal chores.

There was a beautiful sunrise this morning when I went down to do the chores before church. It was very quiet. There was no traffic on the road. The only sound I heard was a group of crows far off on the edge of the woods and some female wood ducks on the beaver pond making their odd “oo-eek” cry. It felt like a Sabbath morning should, the world was peaceful and at rest.

Sunrise this morning.

We’re home from church now. It looks like the whole day will be as lovely as the morning. There is a cool breeze blowing from the north, but the sky is bright blue, the sun is shining, and the goldenrod is glorious. It’s September at its best. Good Sabbath.