The Fink Farm Dirt

In September and early October, gardening waned. The tomato plants fell to disease and gravity. The lettuce bolted. The deformed carrots had been pulled. The chives were wilting in the heat and the drought. The marigolds were more deadheads than blooms.  It was the end of the road for the garden. We'd kept up a steady two hours of work a week in our small plot. But once the tomato plants lost the fight, there really wasn't much to do but clean up. Given that we'd planned a road trip for mid-October, we put everything on hold until this week. We pulled out the remaining tomato plant tangled in its cage.  We picked up all the tomatoes we could find in the mulch.  We'll have volunteers next summer without a doubt, but we did what we could to limit that.  We pulled out the old salad greens, but there's signs of self-seeding.  Looks like we may have more arugula.

We worried about when to harvest the butternut squash. There's no greening, yellowing, reddening, deepening or other particular sign of ripeness once it reaches a certain size.  Google Extension Service suggested harvesting before the first frost.  In California, that would be the day before Never. In Nature's wisdom, the plants told us. The huge green vines that had sprung up on their own, just turned brown and shrank back on their own, leaving six heavy butternut squashes dangling from their red and yellow net bags. (We'd strung them up to keep them away from the wetness of the earth and the mouths of the snails.) We cut them down and divided the harvest. My first butternut squash, I simply seeded, roasted and scraped the flesh from the shell. Butternut is bland, a lovely gold color, but -- yawn -- not much flavor.  But it was fresh and home grown. That imparts something wonderful to it, if you have the stillness and focus to be aware. I have a recipe for r...