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Show x7j MlaDunmiitsiiim y'rf'' Vp1 byNonChalnt These are the days, my friend It is not just a paranoid delusion that most of the bad weather this summer occurred on the weekends. I'm sure that a statistical ; analysis of recent thunderstorms and occasional hail showers would bear me out. So it was no surprise last week when office-bound workers passed around rumors that snow and sleet were forecasted for the weekend. The surprise ended up to be that the weather was glorious. A short hike on Sunday ended up to be a long one. The turning leaves on the hillsides and the billowing clouds above were so beautiful that there didn't seem to be any reason in the world to turn back. A friend and I shuffled through crunchy leaves, scavenged sca-venged for elderberries, jumped across a winding creek and watched a deer watching us. We collected burrs on our socks and shoe laces and gathered thistle flowers. It was one of those rare times when you are forced to admit that "these are the good old days." Autumn this year has already been generous. It hasn't snowed, there is still an abundance of water in the creeks and reservoirs, and the afternoons have been warm and sunny. Around town, the old mining towers are framed in a rainbow of fall colors and even the dried weeds in the abandoned lots around the historic district look scenic. The only scar on the landscape is our garden. In the wake of last week's hard frost it looks like it was hit by a forest fire. The marigolds are drooping down from blackened black-ened stalks and the squash bushes are now nothing more than a small puddle of leaves lying flat against the ground. It is time to put the garden to bed for the winter. The first task is to remove the remains of this year's bean stalks and pea vines, the tomato plants which never reached maturity, ma-turity, and the limp squash plants. It is important to mark the location of any perennials like rhubarb, chives and spinach. Then the garden can be covered with fertilizer and turned. If you can still muster the enthusiasm, there is a great deal you can do now to improve next year's garden. If you were disappointed in this season's overall production, produc-tion, take the time to do a soil test with a kit from a garden supply store. Stunted plants and other disorders may have been caused by imbalanced nutrients which you can correct with a complementary fertilizer. For instance, the soil test might indicate that your vegetable patch is lacking in either nitrogen, phosphorus potash or calcium, all of which are readily available in various commercial fertilizers or can be obtained by offering to clean out a neighbor's barn. It is also helpful to keep a garden notebook. Write down the date of the first frost (and the last, if you remember when it was). These dates vary from hillside to hillside in Park City so it is handy to have your own frost chart. I recorded our last frost on July 4 and the first hard frost this fall on Sept. 19. Try to make notes on which plant varieties worked well in your garden, which crops failed and which, if any, were too abundant. Draw a map of your garden this season and try to shift it around next year. By rotating your crops, even on this small scale, you will avoid drawing the same nutrients from the same patch of dirt every year. Now is also the time to plant flower bulbs and garlic. When all of this is accomplished you will heave a sigh of relief that your gardening chores are over for another year. All that remains of our garden now is a basket of zucchinis and a bucket full of carrots, potatoes and onions, more of each than you would ever buy at Alpha Beta. To avoid the frost, they were hastily dug up and carried into the house complete with a generous amount of dirt. On the next sunny afternoon, the carrots and potatoes will be washed and set out to dry before they find their way into the root cellar. In keeping a garden notebook, you might suggest tallying up how much the garden cost in seeds, tools, fertilizer and hours of labor. That figure might even be compared to the value of a similar amount of vegetables. And for some, it might be interesting to compare that figure and the amount of edible harvest with the cost of an equal amount of groceries from a local market. That is a question we have avoided for at least five years. Somehow, the comparison seems unfairly weighted. In fact, I'm pretty sure the market would win. But who can tally up the benefits of all the hours we spent in the sun and the simple pleasures of success when you toss a salad grown in your own garden? |