Brewster Meadows

Well, tonight it’s supposed to get into the low 40’s, so the seasons are doing their usual dance.High summer with its wildflowers has passed.

The garden has gone from its mid-July order to its late August bounty. Once again planting and pulling weeds pales in comparison to the task of harvesting and preparing for storage.

The garlic is all harvested, the corn is almost ready (guarded from raccoons by pumpkins), tomatoes are turning red, peppers, onions, carrots, cabbage, cucumbers and beets are ready for harvest, and the winter squash is getting big. And, we are still bringing in batches of zucchini for stews and soups for the freezer.

The chickens are all doing well, happy in their coop and yard. One of the chicks has turned out to be a rooster, not a layer! We’ll keep him around for his proud strut and crow – at least for now.

And Deborah did finally manage to find keets (baby guineas), so we have four that are almost ready to be released from their nursery in the coop. She is hoping that they have fixed on the coop as home since they will easily be flying over the fence. That’s the idea – to get them into the garden for bug patrol. We only hope that they’ve read that chapter in the book!

The coop is all trimmed and finished now, and nestles in by the garden shed.

Jeannine visited this summer and for the first time we decided to buy firewood, so we were able to play a bit while she was here instead of our usual crazed felling, cutting and splitting. We decided to bring Misty to the reservoir for her first swim and for a nice afternoon of kayaking.

Deborah is scaling back work even more as of September and will actually switch her residency to Vermont as she will be up here all except for a few days each month – yippee on all accounts! She has been busy writing papers and presentations as her grant work slowly winds down.

Misty continues to grow! We swear that we can see her bones growing as she sleeps.We took her to puppy school, and she passed her test and graduated with flying colors!

And last week Ruthanne volunteered to do several moon rock presentations at the local library as part of a summer-long feature they have in honor of the 40^th anniversary of the moon landing.

We are so pleased that our guest room calendar for the fall is nearly full!  We are looking forward to wonderful times with friends and family.

Added comment: There is/was a blight going through New England and for the longest time we thought that we would come through unscathed. Unfortunately, one after noon we went out the the garden to find that most of the tomato plants were affected. We tried cutting off and back, to allow the fruit to ripen. Unfortunately, we lost the whole crop - about 100 pounds of tomatoes!!! Ahhhhh the joys and perils of gardening!!!!