The blistering heat and suffocating humidity of the past weeks has been replaced with drier, cooler air. Even the quality of light has changed -- clearer and more golden.
The tomatoes, hard hit by blight, are still providing enough to make delicious herb-rich tomato sauce to freeze. And the peppers are coming into their own -- so far the deer don't seem interested in them. (Unlike the corn and beans, alas!)
There are still a few big Brandywines and Cherokee Purples and we are taking advantage of them by having BLTs almost every day. Or even a turkey club sandwich -- bacon, lettuce, tomato, and turkey. Wretched excess but oh, how good!
My cossetted little fig tree provided us with ten ripe figs all at once!
Such a treat! I'd laid in some prosciutto in anticipation . . .
And we enjoyed an elegant little salad of mixed greens, figs, prosciutto, shaved Parmesan, and vinaigrette.
The pleasant weather sent me outside . . .
And the exuberant zinnias in my neglected box bed garden made me think a little tidying was in order.
It took the better part of two days but I pulled weeds till I could once again see the hidden herbs.
Gardening is a continual, mostly losing, fight against Nature,
But how good it feels to bring order, however fleeting, out of chaos.
Beds weeded or cleared; fall lettuce and peas sowed...
Tomorrow I'll visit the nursery to buy some spinach and beet seeds -- and perhaps a few broccoli and collards plants if they have them.
It's amazing the difference a little cooler weather makes. But the weatherman says it will be warming back up soon.
No matter. I know where we're headed.