Harvest moon

My splendid carrots and freshly grown gourds, which I call affectionally call gordo.

AUBURN - My garden is coming to an abrupt end. 

September's cool nights and fading sunshine means fall is taking over and squeezing out summer.

September is like a mafia thug closing in another crook's territory.

But my hardier plants hang on. I looked at my carrots and saw they were ripe for picking. My pristine soil has yielded a bumper crop of these tasty, orange wonders.

I began yanking carrots left and right and can't wait to throw them in the steamer Sunday. I will also blanch the rest of several giant zucchinis. I lost a bunch of tomatoes to blight.

But my carrots look just fine, thank you.

What a way to end a growing season that gave me one of the most spectacular gardens I have grown.

AUBURN - There is strong evidence that my vegetable plants have been using performance enhancing fertilizer.

My plants look like they have been juicing, and I would like to know where they got this illegal substance. 

There could be a huge scandal at 53 Valley Street, and the controversy could be comparable to the United States congress investigating Major League Baseball for steroid use

I might be forced to contact the proper authorities or go before a grand jury to testify against a bunch of vegetables that have given so much to me this summer.

There is no question my vegetables came across with the goods. 

I estimate, and this is no tall tale, I produced a bumper crop of 30 cucumbers, 30 summer squash, 20 zucchinis, a couple of hundred tomatoes, and I still haven't pulled my carrots. The broccoli and Swiss chard continues grow. I had about 300 blueberries because I trimmed them and offered words of encouragement.

But thanks to cool Maine nights and a drenching rain, my tomato plants have expired and everything has slowed down to a walk in my Garden of Eden. Right now, I still have Swiss chard, broccoli and carrots to pick until October. They are the hardiest plants in the fall.  I also had an abundance of pears and blue berries. 

Life was certainly sweet for gardeners in the Pine Tree State this season.

I have frozen about 20 pounds of summer squash and zucchini, and there is frozen tomato sauce lining the freezer in my refrigerator. 

I never fertilized my garden. The soil is that good. 

But I think there are two reasons why my garden was a success this season, and I swear by these two key ingredients.

I had plenty of wood ash to go around after my neighbor generously donated nearly 3,000 pounds for freshly cut ash.

After a bit a research, I was surprised to learn that wood ash in small amounts is beneficial to a vegetable garden. I began dumping the stuff on the garden throughout winter.

In the spring, I began spreading lush grass clippings and began using it to smother weeds around the plants, which took a lot of pressure off my back and knees.

But here's the deal when using my secret ingredients to nurturing a bountiful garden.

You can't burn crap in a wood stove and then apply its poison-ridden ash to an unsuspecting garden. And you can only use grass clippings if you didn't fertilizer your lawn.

Oh, and one more thing: Talk to your plants. Tell them you love them and want them to be good plants so that when they grow up, gardeners can be proud of them each growing season.

Look, gardening is a passion, and I enjoy eating vegetables that are not laced with pesticides. Besides, watching things grow alleviates stress in a world that is a mess for the moment.

Blanching the morning away; Hair we go

"You must give to get, You must sow the seed, before you can reap the harvest."
                                                                                                                                  -  Scott Reed

And there is more on the way.

AUBURN — When the blanching process was first explained to me, my thoughts turned to cryogenics and all those poor souls entombed in canisters like bags of frozen broccoli in an ice box.

Talk about freezer burn!

I didn't consider blanching vegetables for the winter until I extended the width of our garden this season. I was counting on a larger harvest, which seems to be coming to fruition. In the last few weeks, I have harvested nearly two dozen of summer squash, zucchini and cucumbers, and the vegetables keep on coming in spite of the persistent forces of Mother Nature. 

We just can't get enough of the green stuff that grows in my pristine soil.

Blanching vegetables is not a difficult process. You simply plunge fresh-picked vegetables into steaming water for several minutes, remove them and plunge them into ice water for another several minutes. The shocked vegetables are dried and packed into a freezer bag. Before you shove the bag in a freezer, the air must be sucked out of the bag with a straw to vacuum seal the contents.

This method of preserving vegetables keeps the stuff fresh for months.

A couple of mornings ago, Terri researched the art of blanching on the Net. She really did her homework because I was not in the "know" even though I am a master gardener.

She persuaded me to give it a try even though I wasn't sure if I had the patience to spend a morning freezing vegetables. But my stack of zucchini and summer squash was piling up on the kitchen counter, and I wasn't about to let it rot. I put too much time into a garden to watch my vegetables go bad.

We set up kind of a conveyor belt and agreed to work together. We got into a groove and completed the task in an hour.

I did all the cutting — because I am really good with a sharp knife — in the kitchen, off course. I sliced and diced nearly two dozen summer squash and zucchini in minutes without cutting off a finger.

The large steaming pot was in place and another pan of ice water was on stand-by

We lowered a pile of summer squash into the boiling pot and stared at the clock for three minutes.

Now I knew how Mission Control felt when the Apollo astronauts returned to earth after each mission. It was our first time out blanching and we were a bit apprehensive. 

We quickly scooped up the hot vegetables and dropped them in the freezing water and waited another five minutes.

Terri got the freezer bags ready after the vegetables cooled. She held each bag open and I tossed them inside, but before they were sealed, I stuck a straw in the bag and used my mighty lungs to suck out the air.

By the time we finished we had four huge freezer bags loaded with vegetables.

And the harvest will continue until October - weather permitting — of course.

Hair we go

Gimme head with hair
Long beautiful hair
Shining, gleaming,
Streaming, flaxen, waxen

- Hair, the musical

Whenever Terri announces she is getting a haircut, I usually don't get that excited. To me, getting a haircut is like brushing my teeth.

I do it because I don't like long hair. Some men can get away with long hair. I look ridiculous. And I am not a big fan of facial hair. Clean cut always works for me. It makes my hair more bouncy and manageable.

I know I would have never made it as a hippy. 

Over the years, Terri has tried many hairdos, and although I am biased, I never saw her with a bad haircut.

So when Terri returned from the haircutters, I had my usual comments ready when she presented herself.

"Well, what do you think," said Terri, just outside the door.

When I looked through the screen, I didn't move. My eyes snapped wide open and a devilish grin slowly appeared.


Her new-look was stunning.  The usual comments wouldn't work here.


"Oh wow," I said! "You look great."


The truth was she didn't look great. She looked unbelievable in her new do.


And my devilish grin still hasn't gone away.