Under today’s Virgo New Moon I began to harvest more earnestly than I have in these past many months of summer. Soybeans were lifted from their space of seasonal residency; aerial parts fully intact and nicely dried with roots left unto the Earth undisturbed. I resettled one little winged friend from the dried stalks, placing him upon the dried leaves now strewn about where the soybeans had recently stood.
Dried lima beans were gathered for a future life, seeds to be sown somewhere other than here I suspect. If that be true I will miss very little of the company that I have kept while here; almost all of my favored loves have departed this place before me. There is one whom I would miss greatly; my sweet little Lemon whom came in the midst of my sorrows and offered me companionship of the canine kind once again. I hold a hope that she and I will not be too far apart geographically as to prevent our visiting with each other.
Red bell peppers perfectly formed and hued are snipped and placed within the large metal colander, nestled atop earlier plucked Roma and Beefsteak tomatoes, the base for a tomato basil sauce to be created later this day. If time allows this sauce will be processed in Ball jars and then saved to be shared with new companions, if my sense of things before me is accurate, some not too distant day from now.
I now notice the condition of the cherry tomatoes upon three of the individual plants that I have not picked from in the past week. While many appear ripe and perfect to the eye, my taste buds have found them quite wanting for flavor even though they had received more attention, and better living conditions, then some of their other plant neighbors.
It has been a rather disappointing cherry tomato season.
Last spring I had inadvertently lost track of my tomato seedling varieties. After sharing some seedlings with others, and planting for myself those that remained, I was disappointed when I realized that I had not kept one single orange cherry plant that I adore for my garden. I placated myself with the knowledge that I still had an abundance of seeds for that variety and would be able to enjoy it again next season.
Quickly I file a mental note to return to these plants this evening, when it is cooler, with an intention to remove them to the compost for regeneration. I do not wish to waste any more energy attending to that which is unlikely to produce fruit that is desirable to my palate. Returning to my garden chores I clear the garden bed of the dropped, over-ripe and now undesirable fruits.
As the sun rises higher and the resident birds and squirrels rustle in the brush, the sounds omitting from their restless movements conveys their desire for me to retire indoors so that once again they might fully claim their space at feeders and water bowls.
I return to the last watering to be done for the morning.
With watering can in hand I tread across the grass now richly interspersed with plantain, feet bare today, enjoying the sole sensations arising from the meeting of flesh upon soft, cool earth.
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Paraphrasing Florence Scovel Shinn on the subject of loss:
Into the Mystic 