Garden Melt Down

Saying good bye to a summer garden is never easy. A hard frost typically knocks out everything by mid September, yet as mid-October approached it was time for an intervention. I dismantled the bean poles and severed the tomato vines from their hoops, and harvested leeks, onions and the last of the green peppers. My head fills with memories of the young seedlings that I had tenderly transplanted only six months earlier, as I clip off the lower leaves of kale, chard and collards to leave in the ground until  cold weather settles in mid-December. I lightly rake the soil with a scuffle hoe and pull any remaining weeds, before  broadcasting seeds for annual rye grass to grow into a lush green manure crop to hold the soil in place during the winter rain and snow. Unlike the hopes and dreams of the spring garden, cleaning up in the Fall has a somber air, almost funereal as the dead plants are tossed into the compost plants, green tomatoes still clinging to the vine, salad greens gone to seed, and annual flowers that have lost their vigor. All will quietly wither, and decompose over the winter until the following spring, when they will return to the garden as compost to feed the next crop.