Advice from a small town girl

This is my favorite time of the year.

It’s the time of year that is somehow linked with my memories of it finally being cool enough to wear those new school clothes.

There’s something really satisfying about going out to the now-finished garden, cleaning up the beds, digging the spuds, preparing for the winter and, in so doing, the spring.

There’s a sense of relief that I will have a few months off from moving sprinklers, remembering to water the flowerpots, and weeding.

I love my first glimpse of the colorful pumpkin patch after the vines have died back. I even love harvesting the first ton or so and starting to load the trailer.

Then that starts to get old.

I walked through the garden this morning. The wicked little devil on my left shoulder is celebrating the fact that the work is mostly over for the season. The angelic individual on my right shoulder (the one I find easiest to ignore) is mourning all those nearly-ripe tomatoes and peppers and eggplant and green beans.

I tell them both to get over it.

The brisk morning air makes me want to get moving.

I want to start a big pot of soup.

I might even want to bake bread. It’s something in the air.

Every year that my fall flowers actually get a chance to bloom is a victory. It seems that eight of the ten years I’ve lived here, they’ve been frozen before reaching their peak. This year is wonderful. Several varieties of asters and sedum are brightening up the flower beds, along with the volunteer sunflowers and the hollyhocks. A really hard frost has yet to arrive.

Everything seems to be infused with a last burst of energy, including me. For those of us who are grasshoppers rather than ants, it is time to do some last-minute preparation for winter.

Like rodent-proofing the house.

It’s been a great year for rodents in Irbydale this year. A thump in the kitchen told me last night that another pack rat has managed to find its way into the house.

I have nothing to say about that that can be printed in a family newspaper.

And as I was harvesting pumpkins and squash, I discovered that many of them had been tasted.

Just tasted.

Just enough to make them unappealing to my customers.

I may eat rodent-nibbled squash at home, in secret, but I’m sure as heck not going to pay for it.

It wouldn’t be so bad if they’d pick one and eat the whole darned thing, but no, they have to sample them all.

Some have little scars all over them, where tooth marks have filled in with sap and then hardened. Those actually look kind of decorative.

But when I turn over a 20 pound winter squash only to discover a big hole in the bottom, well . . . I get MAD.

Now I’m going to get EVEN.