Two Feet in the Dirt

Well there’s nothing better than waking up on a rainy morning to find that your entire tomato trellis has collapsed sideways onto the peppers and eggplant! So instead of getting to enjoy the relaxing morning of sitting inside and drinking cocoa that I had imagined while lying in bed and listening to the rain, Mike and I got to don our rain gear, stick Caleb into his stroller under the front porch, and try to pull thirty feet of sopping wet tomato plants back to a vertical position. I will be the first to admit blame here- as you know, the first section of tomato trellis collapsed on itself a couple of weeks ago. This happens to me nearly every year by the end of the season as the tomato plants get more and more expansive and heavy. However, I always fix it as soon as it happens. This year, I decided to see what would happen if I just left that small section collapsed and I guess we now have our answer! After weeks and weeks of dry weather, we are finally getting a steady week of rain, which is great for the garden but also loosened the soil to such a degree that the already de-stabilized trellis just couldn’t hold itself upright anymore. At least it gave Caleb and I something to do on a rainy morning- making a run to the garden store to stock up on stronger metal posts so Mike and I could reinforce the old wooden posts in the evening.

In other news, fall is really in the air and it has been one abrupt transition from hot weather just last week to cool, rainy conditions this week. And we’re clearly not the only ones noticing that winter is drawing ever closer. At the beginning of the week, deer ate off all of the sweet potato leaves that were sticking outside of the garden fence and polished off a good selection of flowers growing in front of our house! The next morning, I found that a baby bunny had managed to squeeze through the 2-inch rabbit fencing and have a nice snack of baby spinach. Once I got the rabbit out of the garden, I reinforced the entire outer fence with chicken wire on the bottom, which should be gridded small enough to withstand even baby rabbits.

We, too, are enjoying the return of cool weather crops. We had the first carrots from the garden a few nights ago and enjoyed an excellent potato-escarole soup as well. To date, we’ve harvested over 500 pounds of produce and donated over 10% of our harvest! And we’re looking forward to several more tasty months before winter sets in!