The end of summer is depressing. I’m always so excited in the early spring when I can finally get my hands back in the dirt after those cold winter days, stuck indoors. Spring is so uplifting! The rebirth of everything in nature….butterflies, birds, flowers. What an amazing feeling to be outside experiencing the Lord’s renewal of the earth. Putting all those seeds in the ground and watching them push their way up through the dirt towards the sun. Planting those seedlings and seeing them grow into big healthy plants and picking those first crops that are the best tasting of the year. Then we move on into the late spring and early summer and are so busy tending, picking, marketing and maintaining the garden you don’t have time to think! Plants to weed, water and nurture. Produce to pick, can, freeze and sell. There are just not enough hours in the day – especially if you have a “real” job you have to maintain in addition to farm chores. Although exhausting, I always feel so proud of all I accomplish during the early summer harvest. Everything tastes so amazing when it comes straight from the garden to your table.
And then it gets hot. And the next day is hotter. And then next day is hotter still! Welcome to the South! Home of the hot, dry, never ending summer. It gets so hot and humid it’s hard to breath some days. The brutal sun just beats down on all those happy green vegetables and slowly bakes them into dust. Oh, you can still pick for a few weeks, especially if you have an irrigation or sprinkler system in place. But eventually, the sun wins and your plants turn into dried up sticks in the field. It’s so depressing! To stand and see all that hard work crumbling to dust. I know it’s the circle of life. Plants have to die so they can reseed and grow again. My mind sees the logic and scientific process in it all. My heart just sees withered plants fading away. And, of course by late summer in the south, you have hordes of pests arrive. Those blasted squash bugs and vine borers that ruin those beautiful crooknecks, zucchini and patty pans. Those dog gone tomato horn worms that eat your tomatoes down to twigs overnight. Those creepy leaf footed bugs that seem to be everywhere. And grasshoppers, man the grasshoppers move in and eat everything they can hop, crawl or fly too. So then whatever small amount of produce you’ve managed to coax through the heatwave gets eaten by bugs. Disgusting!
Now comes my least favorite part of gardening – the clean-up. You have to pull-up all those plants and vines and haul them off to the burn pile. Go pick up all the tomato cages and stack them down by the barn. Take down all the panels and dig up all the fence posts. Scoop up all the mulch fabric and ground cover and clean and put it in storage or recycle. Roll up miles of irrigation line so it can hopefully be reused another year. Bring in the tractor and bush hog all the remaining grass, weeds and stems. And then there is nothing. Just dry , dead fields as far as the eye can see. It’s so depressing!
Then it starts again. I’m watching the weather and praying for rain. And waiting. Logging temperature fluctuations and hoping it will start getting cooler soon. And waiting. Researching new crops and seeds, buying up for the fall planting. And waiting. Cleaning out all the raised beds and prepping with new soil, mulch and compost. And waiting some more. Then finally it happens!
The temperatures start to drop. Humidity slacks off. Leaves start to change color. Goodbye Summertime blues! Autumn has arrived and it’s time to plant the winter garden.
Yeah! So happy to be back outside in somewhat cooler temperatures. I have survived another summer’s end and it’s time to plant the winter garden. So happy to live in the south where I can garden almost year round.
Here we grow again…