Fruits of our labors

The mornings are cool, the frost is coming. Final fall harvest: A handful of green beans, several handfuls of dried bean pods for seed, four red tomatoes, three lemon cucumbers, four pumpkins, one small greenish pepper, a mystery squash and one surprise, a green cucumber in the corner of the garden. A handful of raspberries. Tender young beet greens, thinnings for a salad. Three warm brown eggs. I'll be gathering eggs all winter, I hope.

The green beans will go in tonight's chicken pie, with a spinach and beet green salad and sliced tomatoes and cucumbers on the side, and roasted beets and leeks from the youth farm. Eggs are in the fridge, minus the one I stuck in my pocket for lack of hands. The dried beans have been shelled, labeled and put away until spring. The pumpkins and squash are waiting to be roasted and turned into pie. We'll be putting in an order for onions, potatoes and garlic from the youth farm.

We've still got beets and carrots growing, and a few late raspberries ripening. I've already been pulling corn and sunflower stalks, weeding, yanking the bean vines off the trellis. Today I'll go out in the cool fall sunshine and finish the job, putting the garden to bed for the winter.

Life is good.