Deaf to the F Word
Well here comes September swishing her colourful skirts around her tanned ankles as she dances around the bend. I’ve been expecting her. Not in an “I can’t wait to see you” kind of way but more in a Visa statement arriving in the mail kind of way.
It’s not her fault. I blame all the people that have been using the F word for the last month. It is one thing hear talk of “fall” in September, but quite another when people start mouthing about it in August.
Yes mid August nights turned suspiciously crispy and cool. Yes there were sightings of geese winging about in a V formation. Yes a few trees showed a sprinkling of yellow leaves. There was still no need to leap to crazy conclusions that fall was coming early and so would (brace yourself for the W word) winter.
What a terrible thing to say to a woman with a garden full of green tomatoes and wheat. As some of you might recall, I went a bit berserk this spring and decided it might be a fun challenge to try and grow everything I needed for Thanksgiving including wheat for the pie crust and pumpkin for the filling.
When I presented my plans to Darcy he was sceptical. “So we’re having peas and potatoes?” he asked, those being the only two vegetables he knew I always managed to reap a healthy harvest from.
Boy was he wrong. By mid July my peas had all succumbed to powdery mildew and had to be ripped out. But he was right about one thing – I didn’t have what it took to raise up a turkey and chop off its head. For one thing, I didn’t have a turkey. It’s pretty important to have a turkey if you are planning to chop off its head.
What I do have is four plump roosters and a deal with a neighbour to slay and pluck them for a price. In preparation I have done my best not to name them, but recently realized I had given them monikers nonetheless. The one with rust coloured feathers is Rusty, the black one is Blacky, the biggest one is Big One and the little one is Little One. Okay, so they’re not clever names, but they’re still names.
What’s worse, I have visions of arriving at the hit woman’s house on execution day with Rusty, Blackie, Big One and Little One perched along the vehicle seats, each strapped into their own seatbelt.
For the most part I try to focus on the vegetable harvest instead. Despite the powdery mildew, I did get a few packages of peas and I have oodles of raspberries, strawberries, beans, carrots, potatoes, cabbage, onions, beets and turnips as well as some herbs; parsley, basil, tarragon, lemon balm, sage and mint. And I managed to get several jars of honey from my hives; not a bumper crop but enough. If fall holds off a few weeks longer I will also have tomatoes, sweet corn, brussel sprouts, popcorn, wheat and possibly a pumpkin.
Right now the pumpkin is about the size of a softball and very, very, green. It would have been bigger if I hadn’t been forced to start over in July. Early on I had carefully selected the biggest pumpkin on the vine and then plucked off the rest so all the nutrients would flow into the makings of one magnificent golden orb. In July I was proudly examining my fat little pumpkin when horror of horrors, it snapped off in my palm. I have been watching its successor from a safe distance ever since; no more pumpkin petting for this gal.
And so now we wait. For a long lasting summer, for rains to fall gently in the night, for the sun to shine hard in the day, for the killing frost NOT to come and for the harvest, at long last, to be had.
In the meantime if everyone could please refrain from using the F word I would sure appreciate it.