It is October, which means the growing season is coming to an end. For me, it has been a mostly disappointing year. Many of the plants I normally count on simply did not come to fruition. The squash, eggplant, bell peppers and beans all failed to produce enough to justify the space, water and attention they received. Gardening is like that. Every spring, I plant things with considerable optimism. By October, some of them have justified that confidence and others have spent the summer demonstrating that they never agreed to participate. At this point, I have a couple of tomato plants struggling to ripen their last few fruits and two lemon cucumber plants with a few cucumbers remaining. Everything else has been pulled and discarded….

September is usually the month when I start thinking about how to extend the garden a little longer and what needs to be done before winter. This year, I am mostly thinking about how to put it out of its misery. My yard and garden have both been challenging. The yard problem turned out to be the aspen tree we planted more than 20 years ago. New shoots were appearing all over the lawn, while other patches of grass were turning brown or dying. The tree itself was not looking particularly healthy either, so I finally had it removed. That solved one problem and revealed another. Underneath the lawn is apparently an underground aspen transportation system. Roots are everywhere. I have no particularly good idea…

Saturday started as a perfectly ordinary day. I got up, watered the vegetables, had some breakfast and spent part of the morning working on Monday’s article. Late in the morning my gardener unexpectedly showed up. He usually comes on Sunday, but I hadn’t seen him for a couple of weeks, so we talked about several things that needed attention. Later, when I went outside to finish a few follow-up chores, I noticed smoke in the distance. My wife had heard there was a fire somewhere near Verdi, a small community west of us. We’ve had fires over there before. They came and went without causing us much concern, so this one didn’t seem particularly noteworthy either. By the middle of the afternoon, that began to…

Yesterday my wife asked me to put together something for dinner. The reason wasn’t that I had suddenly become a better cook. It was because I had discovered a ten-inch zucchini and she indicated that she had been waiting to try this recipe. She went off to play bridge, so assembling dinner became my assignment. Now, anyone who has grown zucchini knows they seem to have two speeds. They either refuse to grow at all or they suddenly appear as if someone snuck into the garden overnight and left them there. I could have sworn that zucchini wasn’t there the day before. Alongside it was a six-inch pattypan squash that I also hadn’t seen. Even if you inspect the garden every day, these things somehow…