Harbingers of fall

Summer is essentially over. Retired people, such as my dear Terry, are quick to point out that summer officially ends at the equinox. I live by the academic calendar. Convocation is tomorrow. Next thing you know, it will be Christmas. Whoosh.

A sure sign that autumn is coming is the shedding of the acorns. Deer and turkeys are constant visitors. This doe and her twins showed up one evening. In this picture, the turkeys are visible in the background.

Mama deer, right; twins, left; turkeys in background

Here’s one picture of the twins.

What are YOU looking at?

And another in which their spots are more visible.

Fawns still have spots

I walked out to my restoration area because Terry told me the cardinal flowers were blooming. I was disappointed that there were not nearly as many of them. They are being crowded out by smartweed. I suppose I’ll have to try to control that someday. Or maybe conditions next year will be different, and the cardinal flower will hold its own.

Cardinal flower--so vividly red

The butterfly garden that I planted by the garden shed is going crazy. When I put the puny starts in the ground last summer, I could not imagine that it would matter that my garden was a good deal smaller than the recommended size. I could always divide the plants later, I thought. I’m going to have to get on that next spring.

My very crowded butterfly garden by the garden shed

The swamp milkweed by the shed flowered later than the common milkweed. It’s basically the only game in town for the monarchs, and they are swarming it. I counted 10 at one time.

Monarchs on the swamp milkweed

The monarchs like the meadow blazing star as well.

Monarchs on blazing start

The cherry tomatoes are starting to ripen. We have lots of green tomatoes on the standards, but they are slow to turn red. The floods set them back at least two weeks. If the frost is late, we can still get something.

The cantaloupe seem not to have been fazed at all. I know from experience that if left on the ground, insects and worms will invade them from the underside. In the past, I have used the straw that was formerly on the garlic to keep them off the soil. Last year we couldn’t get straw and put hay on the garlic. The hay decomposed. I thought about newspaper, but that would trap water after a rain. In the middle of the night, I thought of using some of Terry’s cocoa fiber mats. Perfect! It’s still literally a pain in the butt to lift each melon and slide the disk underneath. Even worse is putting deer netting over the top to keep the deer from taking one bite out of each melon. It also discourages the raccoons. Not much I can do about mice, but they tend to just burrow through one melon and take all the seeds out before starting on the next on. Terry has counted over 50 melons; we won’t be short.

Cantaloupe on cocoa fiber mats

We’d been picking a bit of corn from the earlier varieties ("Sugar Buns" and "Bodacious"—I don’t make this stuff up). Hilda had to take over the freezing after I cut the tip of my thumb off. On Sunday the vast majority of the corn was ready. I picked nearly 10 dozen ears.

Corn in the wheelbarrow

Dad shucked it all; Hilda de-silked. Most of the corn was perfect. Seven ears were too immature to freeze. Hilda set them aside for the chickens (best thing ever!!)

Shucked corn

When I was done making ratatouille with the surplus zucchini and pattypan squash, I went upstairs to help cut the kernels off the cobs. We put up 32 9-ounce bags, bringing the total in the freezer to 42. We will stop freezing it now. With respect to corn, we are ready for winter.