My life pretty much flows around my garden. I think you can tell how much it means to me. It's the focus of my whole year. When I'm not in it, I'm thinking about it. I love all the seasons of the garden year for different reasons. I spend the winter dreaming about it, planning it, and missing it. Then spring comes. Spotting the first shoots of the snowdrops or discovering a tiny patch of overwintered violas is one of the thrilling highlights of the year. Once the growing season gets underway, most of my activities are centered around planting, tending, weeding, and watering through the spring and summer. Harvest time is when all that work pays off and our days are filled with picking and preserving the products of our labors. Then follows one of the brief spells that, oddly, I really enjoy—destroying it all. I call it, euphemistically, putting the garden to bed for its winter sleep. It's actually more violent than that—ripping things out, cutting things down, and digging things up. That's where I'm at now. I think the reason I enjoy it so much is that, when I'm done, everything looks tidy. The last days of summer and the transition into fall get pretty messy with rampant weeds and half-dead plants. By the end of October, it will all be cleared away. The beds will be clean, their edges trimmed sharp, everything ordered and snug. Then I can say, let winter come. I'm ready. At least as far as the garden is concerned.
We had a spell of chilly weather during the week and the house got so chilly, we thought about lighting the woodstove. Not the furnace. We have strict rules about when that can be lit, but using the woodstove has looser restrictions. But we have a problem. For years we've had trouble with starlings coming down the chimney and into the stove. When we had our new roof put on, we had the roofer put some chicken wire at the top of the chimney. That kept the starlings from going down the chimney, but it didn't keep them from using the wire as a platform for a nest. So the top of the chimney is blocked and we can't use the woodstove. The chimney is so tall that the roofer, using a ladder set on the roof, could barely reach the opening to put the wire in. Stacey sent a message to him telling him about the problem to see if he can come and fix it. We're waiting. And chilly.
Most of the week was gray and drizzly. I did nothing outside but the necessary chores. Instead, I spent my time continuing to transcribe my journals. As I worked, I came to a particularly difficult set of entries. On October 24, 1992, our fifth child, our son, Abraham Edward, was born. He died at birth. My journal records in detail what happened, how I felt, how we dealt with it, the people who came to us with love and comfort. It was very hard for me to read now what I wrote then. Of course I remember a lot of it. It is engraved indelibly in my memory, but some of the small details I'd forgotten. There they were, scribbled on those pages, and reading them conjured up the grief and the love that filled our lives during those difficult times. Abraham's birthday is coming up. On the 24th of this month, he would have been 34 years old. I'm thankful for my knowledge of the great Plan of Happiness and for the covenants I've made that allow us to be an eternal family. That is what got me through those sad days, and it still sustains me now.
October arrived on Thursday. I remember, vaguely, an old cartoon, maybe one of those "Follow the Bouncing Ball" musical cartoons they used to show during the after-school time slot on TV. The cartoon showed a calendar page turning from September to October and the scenery changing from summer to fall. That's what October's arrival was like on Thursday. The trees started to change a few weeks ago, but that morning, it felt like a page had turned and suddenly there was color everywhere. We always say that the peak of fall color here comes in the second week of October, but I don't think the leaves will last that long this year.
Our autumns here can be spectacular, but some years are disappointingly drab. The last few years have been that way. I always look forward to that last burst of color before the winter monochrome sets in. This year looks promising.
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| The hills are starting to show some color. |
On Thursday, Miriam braved the yellow-jackets and closed down her big beehive. The yellow-jackets had won the battle. The bees were all dead. She took out sheets of comb, some just empty wax, and some loaded with honey. While she worked, bees from the other hive and wasps flew all around her. She put the empty wax comb in a bucket to melt down later. She put the honey-filled comb into sealed bowls and put them in the freezer in the woodshed to kill the wasps that were in it. She will extract the honey this week. I don't think she'll get much. She's pretty sad about that.
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| Miriam dismantling her big hive. |
Friday was one of those days that I dream about. The Thayns were here for the weekend. They arrived late Thursday night. Our niece Emma was here too, all the way from Utah. She likes to come visit during harvest time and we love it. She is a willing and hard worker. With all that help on hand, we planned a Big Work Day. At first the weather was not the best. It was warm, but rainy. We started to work anyway, and after a while the rain stopped. We had a great crew of hard workers, and we got so much work done in the yard and garden. We borrowed a stump grinder from Stacey's work and Tabor spent most of the day grinding stumps next door at the Fosters' and in our front yard. Kurt used his tractor to haul the stump grindings to the compost pile.
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| Tabor grinding the first stump. |
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Grinding the second stump.
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| My stump-grinding digging helper, Russell. |
Meanwhile, in the house, Stacey and her crew worked on processing potatoes and tomatoes. The tomatoes, the last of the year, were cooked down into sauce. The potatoes were peeled, boiled, and mashed, then spread on trays to be freeze-dried.
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| June helping with mashed potatoes. |
Out in the big garden, we cleaned out the blighted tomato row, the last scraggly broccoli plants, the frostbitten beans, and dead marigolds. We harvested the rest of the peppers and tomatillos and pulled up the plants. We removed old landscape cloth, raked, and pulled weeds. We stacked the tomato cages for the winter. At the end of it all, Kurt tilled the row we'd cleaned out. We got so much done. It was wonderful.
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| Workers in the big garden. |
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| June and Hazel after stacking tomato cages. |
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| The last of the peppers and tomatillos. |
And then, to finish the day in the best traditional Friday way, Hannah made pizza. And the sky contributed to the finale by giving us a spectacular sunset.
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| Sunset on Friday. |
This is General Conference weekend, so all of our activities had to be planned around the two sessions at noon and 4:00. The day started with a big breakfast. Stacey prides herself on making meals from all home-grown ingredients, and this was a Potter County feast. She made apple turnovers with filling from last year's apples. She made a Waldorf salad with apples and walnuts from the Amish and celery from my garden. She fried bacon from last year's pigs, and hash browns from this year's potatoes. I scrambled a dozen and a half eggs from my own hens. To drink, there was last year's apple cider, this year's grape juice, and milk from the dairy down the road.
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| Breakfast with Russell. |
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| A Potter County breakfast. |
Between the two sessions, Stacey, Hannah, June, Mabel, and I took a drive into the Susquehannock State Forest to the Losey Overlook. From the overlook, we could look out over a wide vista of Potter County. We went hoping the fall colors would be good. They were good, but a bit dull. It was a hazy afternoon. We had to hurry home again and get ready for the second session of conference.
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| The view from the overlook. |
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| At the overlook. |
The second session of conference was excellent. I especially loved the music. Tabor and Hazel left then to go home. The rest of the Thayns are staying until Monday. After the session, we had a big dinner. This was another Potter County harvest meal. Sarah prepared most of it. The main course was a pork roast from our own pig. We also had spaghetti squash, delicata squash, salsa verde and chips, grilled cabbage steaks, funeral potatoes, and rolls—almost all of it made from ingredients from our garden. The Shilligs joined us and brought a pasta salad. It was all delicious.
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| Our post-conference feast. |
I went to bed last night feeling a little queasy. I suspected it was something I ate. At midnight it was worse. I had terrible stomach pains. I got up and Stacey helped me take a hot Epsom salts bath. That's my go-to remedy when I feel like I'm coming down with something. I soaked for half an hour and then went back to bed. I slept late this morning and when I finally got up, I felt pretty good. Not 100%, but much better than I was during the night. I decided I'm taking it easy today. That won't be hard to do. It's the Sabbath and General Conference, so I know at least from noon to 2:00 and 4:00 to 6:00 I'll be reclining in my bed watching the last two sessions. I'm going to send someone else down to do the chores.
As is our tradition on General Conference Sunday, Stacey made cinnamon rolls this morning. She's famous for her cinnamon rolls. This tradition has passed on to our children. Geoffrey and Josiah make excellent cinnamon rolls too.
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| Stacey's cinnamon rolls, slightly overdone. |
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| Geoffrey's raisin pecan cinnamon rolls. |
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| Josiah's cinnamon rolls. |
At 2:00 our niece Emma is leaving to fly back to Utah. It was great having her here. I hope she comes to visit every year at harvest time. I looked at the week ahead and I see that, after a brief spell of rain tonight, the weather will be clear, but chilly, with frost predicted every night. That's as it should be. It is October, after all. I still have some things that need to be done out in the garden, but the harvest is over except for late apples and there aren't very many of those. The rest is ripping, cutting, digging, and mowing. I'm hoping that by the end of the week my garden will be ready for its euphemistic winter's sleep. Then the garden year will be over.
