Frost

It froze Wednesday night, and Thursday I looked outside to see all my tomato plants, eggplants, squash plants, beans, etc. wilted. I was hoping for a couple more weeks of harvest before frost; in the past, frost has often waited until Halloween before coming, but not this year, dang it. We had a late, cold spring, and now just when my tomato plants were really coming on great with a huge bunch of tomatoes, now it had to frost before October was half over.

My family and I went out this afternoon and took everything we could; all the squash, the three cantaloupes that had volunteered over by the grape vine, the few beans that were left, the last of the tiny little lemon cucumbers, the baby eggplants that weren't through growing, and of course every tomato we could get, from the blushed, starting-to-turn ones to the completely green ones. I'll find something to do with those green ones; I've seen one recipe for chutney, and while I have no clue what one even does with chutney, I'm sure I'm about to find out. I can't afford to turn my nose up at anything that could be used for food.

Tonight I made more applesauce from the last of the bad apples that I'd picked off the tree or gleaned from where they'd fallen. It was almost another quart--not bad at all, really. And we did actually get a dozen nice, clean apples from the tree; the codling moths left us that many, which is almost three times the number we got last year. Now that I know the bug-killed apples make decent applesauce, I'll start collecting and using them much earlier next year, as soon as they're a decent size. The riper they are, the better, but even the not-so-ripe ones made okay applesauce. Hey, it's food, and non-chemically treated food at that. That's obviously why the bugs and birds have been liking it so much. At least the family got a few nice apples for our trouble. Much as I hate to say it, though, I may have to give up and spray next year. That tree had so many apples that I hate to think how many were wasted that wouldn't have been if not for the moths. We'd have had a bumper crop, just from one tree. I'll have to ponder that and make a decision by spring.

I'm bummed today, though. I hate to see the growing and harvest season end; I feel as though I've barely had a summer, and now it's over. Oh, well. We learned a lot with the garden this year, we found out what worked and what didn't, and we'll know how to do it even better next year. And we did get quite a bit of harvest from our tiny backyard garden spaces. Everything is as it should be...and the wheel turns.