Heading home at summer's end

It's not really the end of summer (it's pretty darn hot and humid even here in the Southern Appalachians, actually).  This has been an exceptionally hot (and record-breaking) summer throughout the Eastern U.S.  Yuck.

On a teaching schedule, classes begin in mid-to late August, so it's time for us to go back down the 'hill' (the Blue Ridge Escarpment) to the Piedmont of South Carolina in a couple of days.

My first fall garden 'class' is about fall vegetable gardening;  I just hope the soil is moist and cool enough to get the greens and lettuce going after I distribute seeds to whomever is there! 

Unknown marauders have disturbed my flats of fall greens sown so far  (I need a potting bench to elevate my seedling flats).  Hhrmph. But maybe there are enough purple mustard and kale seedlings to transplant.

I'm looking forward to getting my beds in shape in the main vegetable garden and the satellite garden, as well as continuing to harvest tomatoes and beans, when we're back up in the mountains. 

I've got a couple of ice chest loads of roasted tomatoes, peaches, beans, and other harvested veggies to take down the hill, too.  They'll go in the chest freezer in the basement. Uh, maybe this fall, I will get decent lights installed down there finally.

End of August

August was an unusual month in the garden this year. The main gardener (me) was indisposed, the vegetables were sulking (or being eaten by woodchucks), the flower borders look nice enough, until you look closely and realize that crabgrass has invaded the edges and editing is highly necessary.

My gardening companion, totally focused on finishing a book project, has been rather desultory in his mowing of our remaining lawn, encouraged by periodic rains (uh, I don't know how to run the riding lawn mower, thankfully). But he has 'edited' the front meadow, cleaned up a lot of fallen branches, and probably done a lot more that I know.

But our garden definitely shows the absence of our attention.

I remembered recently that I had added a visit to our garden (aka 'home landscape') at the end of a natural gardening program in mid-October for our (Clemson University) Osher Lifelong Learning Institute program.

This was late spring madness, to be sure. I know the garden was lovely then, but what was I thinking!

Thank goodness for gardeners, there's always the next season.