Sunday, November 16, 2008

Thriving On Neglect

Here in Ditmas Park, 'tis the last rose of summer...

but out in Canarsie, it's a marigold riot!

The ageratum's not quite ready to call it a year, either.

The number of posts I've done about my garden since fairly early in October (i.e., none) is perfectly indicative of the amount of attention I've paid to my poor little plot since then (i.e., none). I just got too busy with one thing and another to bother making the trek out to Canarsie for anything other than kayaking purposes, and anyways, gardening in the dark is a little tricky. Last "harvest" I did before I decided I had to just write off the garden as done for the year was when I took out most of the basil for a last big batch of pesto. Think that was in early October.

While we were in Seattle, I came that close to sending an email out to the Sebago Diggers saying "Hey folks, I think I'm done with my garden for the year - if anybody sees anything in there worth picking, please pick it, 'cause otherwise it'll just go to waste".

I'm actually quite selfishly glad I didn't though - I may have written off the garden as a done deal, but with the warm, wet fall we've had, the garden didn't agree with that assessment in the least!

I'd checked in with a flashlight the weekend we did the Norwalk Islands, and came home with 3 bell peppers and 2 very nice cucumbers (amazing seeing as the vines looked totally dead before I left for Seattle!) and a whole bunch of green onions.

I was going to post a picture of those & call it "Garden's Last Gasp" --

only it wasn't!

The club had a sea kayak committee meeting today; I got a ride with Prof. M, and we got there a bit early, so I decided to run out to my marigold-overrun bed & see what last gleanings could be found by daylight.

The pickings turned out to be pretty good!

More onions, the chard rocks on (amazing vegetable, doesn't seem to care what the temperature is, just grows & grows & grows), turnip greens (they never quite turnipped properly but I'll just chuck the greens in with the chard), and a whole BUNCH of green tomatoes, which one of our newer club members told me to put in a paper bag & they'd ripen up, and Holly the Sailing Chair, being from down South, reminded me that green tomatoes are in & of themselves a fine thing...

Here was today's most entertaining discovery, though -

I have this sort of collage of beachcombing finds worked in around the stones that hold the sides of the raised bed in place. Funny thing is, it's become something of a collaborative collage - a couple of clubmates have added pretty stones, or shells, or pieces of driftwood. When the garden's all overflowing the sides of the bed, and the clover is high and thick, a lot of that gets hidden. It's starting to calm down, though, and today I discovered that somebody left me an inukshuk Inuksuapik*!


*"C" comments for why the word change! Thanks Michael!

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