a few garden memories
memories of summer
Summer hung on for a long time this year, but, as I warned the boys this evening as I pulled out extra blankets, tonight is going to be the coldest night of the season so far. Harvey at least is ready for snow: maybe tonight, maybe tomorrow, he says. He and I worked hard this weekend getting the garden ready for the winter; it's not quite done yet, but if you ask me the snow isn't coming quite as soon as that, so there's probably time. There are still a few flowers blooming, even: the butterfly bushes, that go as long as the bees can manage and longer, and the late purple chrysanthemums from Grandma Judy. None quite so pretty as our zinnias, of course, pictured above in an arrangement from August. I like that picture and never got a chance to show it off, so I thought I would do it now, on the edge of winter.
Another garden story that I never shared is our bean teepee. We were inspired by Vera's Baby Sister, by Vera Rosenberry—or I was, in any case, and even though Harvey's baby brother is no kind of problem to him he was happy to agree when I asked him if he wanted his own teepee.
leafy and cool
It grew in very nicely and he was happy and proud of it when he thought about it, but it was really too small to do any playing in. Not that I could have made it much bigger; as it was I had to use a ladder to pick the beans at the top and even then there were many that escaped the harvest. Oh well, we're not huge fans of green beans in this family anyways, so no great loss. And because we couldn't pick all those beans to eat I was able to save plenty of seeds for next year! Maybe Zion will want a teepee to make up for his baby brother or sister showing up...