Well, it’s embarrassing how long it’s been since I posted last, but it’s really a good sign that the winter flew by in a flash. I never even got around to finishing up the last of the fall clean up, and I’m already late for spring planting.

The garden is a mess: shriveled pumpkin and melon vines still drape the hill; a couple of soaker hoses lie idle, rotting under the sun; fruit trees wait patiently for their dormant-season pruning, and the last of the potatoes still snuggle underground. This season’s asparagus has already emerged, and I haven’t even trimmed back last year’s fronds.

Man, I’ve been slacking!

But not really. Perhaps inspired by the exuberant growth of last year’s garden, I’ve spent this past winter on my internal garden and planted my own seeds for the future. I’ve been busily studying to become a certified personal fitness trainer, so I can share my passion for an active life full of good food and good feelings with as many people as possible.

I’ve started a new business, called Prime of Life Fitness, and I’m spending most of my time developing the website. It’s only a placeholder page right now, but I’m sure you’ll want to bookmark it for later, when you’re looking for personal training for Baby Boomers 😉

I made a resolution not to muck around in the garden until I have filed my taxes, and since that’s not done yet, it looks like I won’t be enjoying spring lettuce, spinach and peas. But thanks to the April 15 deadline, I’ll still get my tomatoes and corn and melons.

Thanks for waiting patiently for my return! How did you get through the winter?

Today I’m thankful for a garden that is the foundation of my holiday meal. I’m a little surprised, but produce from my garden is playing a central role in tonight’s Thanksgiving dinner.

I just dug the potatoes for mashed potatoes this morning. Same for the carrots that are stuffed in the turkey cavity and diced to roast in the pan juices. The onions throughout the meal are from the bag stored in the garage. On the shelf next to the onions are the butternut squash that I’m serving roasted with vanilla and walnuts. And for dessert, cherry pie made with that last bag of frozen cherries.

I’m glad I worked so hard this summer, I’m proud that I preserved so much of mother nature’s bounty, and I’m grateful, so grateful for my immeasurable wealth.

It’s October 25, and we’re finally expected to get our first freeze of the season.  I can’t believe it’s almost Halloween, and tonight’s the first night I spread the sheets over the remaining garden plants to salvage what I could. The extra three weeks of summer made a huge difference in the overall harvest for the year. I’ve already harvested and composted most of the remaining plants, so I’m really only protecting the herbs, the last tomato up against the house, the potatoes, and the last little Thai chili peppers.

The days have been getting steadily shorter, and it’s harder and harder to get anything done in the garden after work. So as much as I hate seeing winter begin, I know it’s time, and I’m ready.

It’s officially autumn, and the balance has tipped from daylight to darkness. For the next four months or so, there will be more hours of darkness each day than daylight. Here in Arvada, the great irony is that we’ve had an extended summer with record-breaking high temperatures well into late September, so there’s still a LOT of work to do in the garden. Very few of my vegetables have fully crapped out, and the hot-weather-lovers are still cranking away.

And now I understand the value of the Harvest Moon. The Harvest Moon is described as the full moon closest to the autumnal equinox. It’s called the Harvest Moon, because its bright light allowed farmers and peasants to harvest their crops late into the night after the sun had set. The tilt of the earth on its axis makes the full moon appear larger and brighter than usual, and the effect is stunning.

Almost bright enough to harvest by.

I don’t think I’ll be harvesting by the light of the moon this year, but I love the image of hardworking farmers looking forward to the moonlit night harvest that marks the end of their long summer’s labor. I’ll still have plenty of cleanup to do after the Harvest Moon, and I’ll still have cool weather crops in the ground for several months, but symbolically, this is the end of my garden year.

For the next several months my gardening will happen mostly in my memory, as I reflect on this past summer’s garden, and in my imagination, as I plan and dream about next year’s garden. But tonight there’s still work to be done: eggplant to roast and freeze, yellow squash soup to cook and freeze, and honeydew sorbet to make.

Every year a few zucchini manage to escape my notice. Maggie gives them the sniff test, but finds them not to her liking.

Molly had to check them out, too.

I don’t know how I miss them, but every year as the zucchini leaves begin to die back from the powdery mildew, I spot a huge, monster squash (or two, or three). Those are 12 inch floor tiles, and Molly’s a big, fluffy, 12 pound cat. They’re really not good for anything but funny photo ops and compost at that size, so there you have it!

In early September I'm harvesting daily, and this is one day's harvest.

Seriously. This is what I was hauling out of the garden every evening in late August and early September.

It’s that time of year when I resent every daylight hour I have to spend at the office, because it’s another hour I don’t have free to spend harvesting goodies out of the garden. It’s a tremendous irony to me that all spring and summer I put hours and hours into the garden to make it grow, and everything comes ripe just as the days are getting shorter, and it’s harder and harder to get everything picked in the evenings after work.

So I spend every free daylight hour picking, and my remaining waking hours I spend washing, blanching, freezing, dehydrating, pickling, or bagging up to give away to friends and neighbors.

It’s a blast to see my garden paying off such a bountiful harvest. I honestly feel like Mother Nature has redeemed herself after last year’s destruction. But I’m also a bit happy to see the days shortening and some of the plants reaching the end of their cycles so I can begin to slow down again–and so I can catch up on my posts!

There’s a lot more to tell about the last few weeks in the garden, and hopefully I’ll get caught up soon. Thanks for waiting!

Keeping a garden journal seemed like such a great idea back in February when there was no gardening I could actually do. Now that it’s August and I’m spending almost every free moment in the garden, the notion seems a little optimistic. I thought I could document each day’s harvest and all the subtle idiosyncrasies of the vegetable varieties I chose. Heck, I can barely pick each day’s harvest, much less cook it, freeze it, can it, or give it away to friends and neighbors.

Tonight after putting in a full day at work, I spent an hour and a half harvesting beans, cukes, zucchini, yellow squash and tomatoes. Then I spent another two hours blanching and freezing anything I couldn’t use or give away by tomorrow night. And the kicker is, I’ll have to do it all again tomorrow!

But the dirty little secret of gardeners everywhere is that no matter how exhausted we are in August, we love every minute of it. There’s no better way to feel like a goddess than to literally harvest the fruits of your labors. And if you can put up a little bit to enjoy on a cold February day when the summer garden is just a glimmer of a memory, well, that’s pretty good, too.

Check out this handsome visitor who spent several hours clinging to my cilantro a week or two ago.

Can you spot the green dragonfly clinging to the cilantro?

People often ask me how I keep the squirrels, rabbits and other vermin out of my garden. It’s easier than you think: I just feed them other stuff in a location that’s safer and therefore more attractive to them.

For some reason, the rabbits in the neighborhood leave the garden alone. I see them eating grass and weeds in the lawn, but never my tender veggies. The squirrels are another story, though. We have a lot of squirrels in our neighborhood, and their sweet tooth leads them to favor our just under-ripe melons, plums and peaches. They use the fences between yards as squirrelly highways. Running along the top of the fence keeps them off the ground and gives them a safe vantage point for taunting the dogs penned in the yards.

I discovered several years ago that in addition to trying to figure out my squirrel-proof bird feeder, the squirrels were often raiding my compost pile – at least when I dumped something good, like pineapple peelings or melon rinds. They can reach it easily from the fence without having to venture out to the middle of my open, shelter-less yard. So now that I have a fancy compost corral, I leave the good stuff sitting around the edges for the squirrels to eat without having to dig through the whole pile.

One of my local squirrels helps himself to a corncob that we left for him on the compost corral.

Whether it’s corn cobs, melon rinds or apple cores, we tuck our scraps in between the logs of the compost corral for the squirrels to find. Dennis calls it the Squirrelly Buffet. It’s free entertainment for us to watch them climb all over the corral like it’s a big jungle gym. Watching them try to haul off a corn cob or melon rind that’s as big as they are is an absolute hoot. They typically drag their find a few feet down the fence and up the tree that hangs over into my yard from the neighbor’s house.

The fully gnawed corn cobs end up a few feet down the fence from the compost pile.

I know it’s generally considered a bad idea to feed wildlife, but letting the squirrels pick the leftovers out of my compost corral keeps them from making off with the real goodies from the garden and gives me lots of good laughs. I think I can live with the guilt.

One day you wake up, and it's already August, and the garden has exploded.

The first of August is known in Celtic/Pagan lore as Lammas, a time to celebrate the first fruits of the harvest. It marks the midpoint between the summer solstice and the autumn equinox, and in the garden it marks the start of the bounty of the harvest. The days are hot and sultry still, even as the length of daylight shortens. And the plants you’ve labored and fretted and fussed over for months are bursting with fruit – almost more than you can pick on a daily basis.

A single day's harvest at the beginning of August.

Summer’s influence is obvious in my garden.  The rows between beds that seemed excessive in May are now barely wide enough to shimmy through without bending a branch. The plants have grown so full that they form a canopy over their beds. And every day I pick more vegetables than I can possibly imagine. This, finally, is the payout of the jackpot you’ve been chasing. All those quarters you plunked into the slots in April, May and June come pouring out in a jackpot of beans, squash, cucumbers and tomatoes in August.

The Wiccan rituals associated with Lammas are rich in symbolism of the cycle of life and the passage of the year. The grain of the field dies so that the people and animals who eat it can live. The ritual speaks to the annual seasonal cycle of death and rebirth that is so potently realized in a backyard garden. But as I researched the holiday and the traditions associated with it, I was most taken with the symbolism of transformation. Just as the farmers sow the seeds and nurture the plants to transform them into food, just as the baker grinds the grain and bakes it in the oven to transform it into bread, so do we always have the opportunity to transform our lives with our efforts. Many Lammas rituals call for participants to ponder the aspects of their lives they’d like to see transformed by their efforts or left behind as the cycle of the seasons progresses.

A simple backyard garden really makes me think about the joys and challenges ancient people must have known as they lived in tune with the earth and its seasons. The beans and squash and tomatoes are great. Sharing the harvest with friends is fulfilling. The satisfaction of reaping what you’ve sown and seeing your labor pay off is exhilarating. But the connection gardening gives me to the seasons and cycles of the earth that humans have known for all time is powerful, heady stuff, indeed.