The Change of Seasons

Fall is finally here...after a late, hot, dry summer that left us lingering indoors to escape the sauna outside we find ourselves making excuses to go outside in the first place.  The days are warm and breezy without being hot, and the nights are deliciously cool.  I love getting up first thing in the morning and snuggling into a pair of thick fuzzy socks and my favorite flannel shirt.  The corn in the fields surrounding the property rustle all day into the breeze, and I love to just sit out there and listen, knowing that in a few short weeks it will be gone.

This changeover from summer to fall has also changed the intensity of my work, from the frantic bustle of putting-bounty-by before the next batch ripens to something slower, and more leisurely.  My summer garden was very, very late this year.  Not because we set it out late, but because we had several very late freezes that stunted early growth and slowed sprouting, followed by rain that nearly drowned the plants that survived the freezing.

Two weeks ago I was still getting several five-gallon buckets of tomatoes from my garden every other day, worried about the slow encroach of a late season blight before the bulk of the tomatoes even ripened.  This week I decided to cut my losses and started cleaning the tomato plants out of my garden.  I have the last three buckets of tomatoes sitting in my kitchen...a bucket full of red ones, one of green ones, and one mixed between the two.  What I suspect might be the last cucumbers of the year are laying on a counter.  I know I still have apples and pears left to can, but at the moment they feel like they're in the distant future.  I feel that I'm in a lull between frantic bouts of canning...the eye of the storm, if you will.  I want to enjoy it.

I've gotten what I wanted to preserve from my summer garden already, so I'm going to play with what's left.

Those cucumbers are earmarked for my very first homemade dill pickles.

The green tomatoes?  Are going to become green tomato relish, plain canned slices for frying, frozen slices for canning, and just a couple of jars of green tomato puree to play around with as green tomato pie filling.

The red tomatoes....they'll probably just get cooked down into spaghetti sauce for dinner.

Enjoy your week, everyone!