Ending and Beginning

And so it is Fall, but not really Fall. Not down here. The weather says no, but the season says yes. Here are Ibis passing over the farm today, on their way to somewhere...we call this a 'bird group'. So we can say "bird group!"and I know that's hard to see, so here is a lonely Ibis...a very large and beautiful bird. We have a lot of large and beautiful birds down here. One sign of Fall, yes - those bird groups - but there are many. Flower beds to re-plant and, as you have seen here, many battles to fight as things begin to look weary and weedy. Will was in Mississippi, and picked up a ton of chicken *****. Let us see now, he calls this 'pelletized fertilizer'. My oh my, it is fragrant. It comes in a giant plastic sack, strapped into the bed of the truck. He borrowed a cone-shaped spreader from a friend, and went through the field spewing it everywhere. Now, some may think that pictures of dirt are boring, but if you know the ground has just been plowed and spread with 'pelletized fertilizer', it is a very satisfying sight indeed. If you look at that picture very closely you can see Dude the Dog out there, in the dirt. Although it looks like he's keeping watch, he's just following us around hoping for dinner. All season we've been piling up the vegetable matter...plants pulled from rows, compost from the kitchen, etc. The compost pile looks happy. In the middle you can see two old watermelons from a couple of months ago. It takes a while for things to break down in a compost pile: We're getting ready to 'pull up some rows' to begin the fall planting: At the very beginning of this blog, in May, what we had was an overload of lettuce. That's always the first thing to come in, Spring or Fall. So the lettuce will be planted first, and of course Red Beans for Fall. The trick with red beans is always to harvest them before the late fall rains begin. There will be a folk festival here in early October, and we are responsible for growing some of the veggies the campers will partake of during that weekend. So, we had better get busy! Some things refuse to quit, like the eggplants; and then there are the late-starting but ever-increasing loofas. And, I am sorry to say, the 'black-eyed peas but who cares we are so sick of peas'. There, I said it. But that's ok. You can't be gloriously happy all the time with every garden event.