Seven

I'm dragging my heels about letting go of the growing season. I might have to post my first photo to give you a visual. First I will try words:

Currently, there are two tomato plants which have not given up on ripening sitting behind me in the living room. On the sill of the tiny south-facing window, through which they're receiving the desperate few rays of daily sunlight, sit a handful of tomatoes rescued from the plants that didn't make the come-inside cut. On the other side of the room, hanging from a clothes drying rack, hang the three plants that still had viable-looking green fruit as of Sunday afternoon, and which are hanging upside down because a gardener friend said that if you do that to them the nutrients can make their way down into the fruit. We'll see. I remain, as ever, skeptical. On the floor by the door, sitting in the boot tray (I like to think of it spelled more Frenchly: bootré) are the remains of the herb section of the garden. Two dead cilantros and two dead basils. The basils'd have survived if not for that one last too-cold night. Well, and the aphids. Also in the dead herb area is the bolting lettuce that survived extra long because it was under the patio table during the big rain that did the others in. And the lone surviving herb - a tough as nails rosemary.

That's what's happening inside. Outside it's a deck garden graveyard. I was just getting things under control, consolidating the dirt and picking out the drainage rocks to return both to their respective natural habitats, when it poured again last night. Now I have pots and pots full of mud. Overturned crates that used to keep things up closer to the sun, yogurt containers that took on the smell of compost such that I wasn't allowed to bring them back in to reuse and didn't get around to recycling, and little bits of floss that used to hold the tomatoes to their stakes. It's depressing, but I'm apparently not yet convinced it's more depressing than a naked deck. I might just have to wrap the railing in Christmas lights early to stave off the end-of-growing season blues.