Its autumn. I and feel the wave of tiredness wash over me. “Time to rest,” my body says. And at 42 I feel it more than ever. We made our last harvest this week. The last of the okra, eggplant, peppers, and holy basil. Usually by this time I would have laid the fall layer of compost and planted the root crops by now. But this year, I am off. I wonder if the long summer drove me away from the garden. I allowed myself to get side-tracked by the heat. I hear about all the hardships that farmers in our region had this summer. Some of them have folded their farms. Some are continuing because what else will they do. I think, “thank goodness I still have the option to go to the grocery store for produce.” And I wonder about how we will fare in years to come.
I’ve been learning more about native plants and their medicinal uses. I am learning how hardy they are and sometimes I wonder why I keep cultivating a garden that is less resilient when all these other native greens and plants exist. Its harder though now that all the knowledge has been lost. The knowledge of what’s what and how to process each plant.
I finally got most of my prints from Drawn to Grow loaded onto my website. It almost killed me. All this technology I am forced to get used to. But I tell myself that I must keep up. And there’s a big question for me this fall, “what’s next?” And I don’t know the answer.