Friday, September 9, 2011

Gardening in September

Friday, September 8

...the sun is now up and the air is warm and the sky is clear and the breeze is mild, and it feels like the promise of spring all over again, until I kneel down to seed in the spinach and notice the zucchini plants to the left, most of their leaves chewed off overnight. Then I remember Jim telling me just two days aho that th edeer had come back and eaten his whole back patch of beans. Times for a quick therapy session, focusing on the remedy of Hinder, and the recognition that my zucchini plants are still alive, still bearing more than we can eat or give away. Back to the spinach, so buoyed by the sweetness of the morning and my self-help treatment that I finish the row in a trice and hustle my way up to reseed the beets and turnips. As i kneel down to plant the nubby beet seeds with the sun at my back and the warm coffee cup in my hand, the sensations of the moment are so comforting that my mind is filled with a  renewed awareness of the truth that one cannot force nature, as I had tried to do during the late August heat wave. There's a time to plant and a time not to plant, and now at last is the time to do it.