Fall is here!

We skippity hopped right past Indian summer and into mid-Fall! In a matter of days I put away all my summer clothes and pulled out winter garb.
The sun came out today encouraging me to get out and dig, clean, compost and mulch. I checked on some lettuce, arugula, radishes and spinach planted a over week ago growing under cover and found all have germinated but the spinach. I also planted more garlic. All are planted in 4x4 raised beds. The lettuce varieties are  Oak Leaf and, new to me, Spotted Alepo bought at the Monticello gift shop. The radishes are Sparkler. In an adjacent 4x4 bed are magnificent Chinese cabbages just heading up and more lettuce: Marveille de Quatres Saison (an heirloom French variety that grows right through winter) and Black Seeded Simpson. Swiss chard is doing OK.
Today's harvest? Okra pods full of seeds for next year's summer harvest.

Recovery

Our little town and my little garden endeavor endured unbelievable amounts of water from Hurricane Florence. It bends the mind to have nature turn in such a way, more so because we, at least me,could not imagine worse than Hurricane Matthew. Florence shattered records and many more lives than Matthew. In the plus category we were as prepared as we could be for an epic storm we thought would never come.
Into the bardo we slid, oddly resigned, preparing best we could knowing the garden would drown which, it did. This time the woody herbs died within days. Gone were the sage, tarragon and rosemary, poof. The root vegetables evaporated too tender to put up a fight. Oddly, the basil and okra survived though they are known to withstand heat and dry. Our brassicas- broccoli, Brussels spouts, mustard, kale and cabbage-not happy for want of sun and too much rain looked sad but have miraculously rebounded, I think. In the past week I have planted leafy fall vegetables like lettuce and spinach slowly rebounding from the same reaction I had to Matthew's floods which was, inexplicably, to recoil from gardening altogether.
Putting one foot in front of the other in order to order oneself I participated in the Robeson County Agricultural Fair as planned, won a handful of blue ribbons, and volunteered as a Master Gardener going through the motions akin to living while grieving grave loss. I have cried many tears and many times on account of  this regional catastrophe. After Matthew I felt we had done the worst. Now, I wonder if it will get worse, when, and where. In the meantime, I carry on differently.

Chinese cabbage in raised beds post Hurricane Florence 2018. 

Lists

Hurricane Matthew destroyed our garden beds with at least 24 inches of water here on Chestnut Street. It was an awesome lot of water. Our internet service was also down the better part of a month. Fun times. I escaped to my daughter's house where I mostly talked about hurricanes and...my garden. Then I went to Fifth Season garden center and bought seeds, in particular broad beans which I have never grown.
I have been asked to make a list of my favorite websites. Here goes.
https://www.splendidtable.org/recipes/fragrant-tuscan-herb-salt
https://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/
https://www.motherearthnews.com
https://www.ces.ncsu.edu
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BvUUpBvbCaY (Charles Dowding videos)
https://www.weather.gov
This is a start.

Red okra flower. Isn't she pretty?

Second Summer

It has been a long, hot summer. Looking back at my journal high heat and humidity eased up on us the last week of June and has been here with, maybe, three days off-just the facts, y'all. We are now moving into our third month of summer misery. All gardening takes place between dawn and 10:00 a.m. I liken August to February in that we are mostly trapped indoors in conditioned air.

Now is that time when I am planting a second crop of early summer veg. Fungus attacked my first plantings of green beans. Combined heat and humidity is bad, really bad for all but field peas and okra which are chugging along just fine.

They were so cute!
(Cherokee yellow wax bean)