The Tipping

The leaves of tomatoes speak softly of their distress. The cucumbers with mammary tops and nippled bottoms. I know to pull them in one week's time. The beans will attempt a second flush, always weaker than the first, and they too shall then be toppled. I know where we are, no need for the Romans. We've moved this August into autumnal territory. I felt it today in the cooling air at the farm, and the graying dismal sky, the tinge in the sycamores' greens.

In this moment we are reducing tomatoes to sauce and blanching endless green and yellow beans for the freezer, converting bunches upon bunches of various basils to pesto. We are also packing for a camp trip to the even cooler coast of Maine, where late August can reveal the hints of autumn more clearly. We have rustled up a small and undistinguished camera of unknown brand and have meats parboiled and frozen for the fire. Soon I will make bread, eat shellfish grilled over coals, and have a sense that the not-right boerewors will be made right enough with eggs at breakfast. We will bring tomatoes and eggplant and garlic. We will visit old friends, inland, on a lake. And we will return to what awaits.

Which is new bosses, and even new jobs, and much, much painting work ahead. And new upstairs neighbors with toddler. The beach farm, where mildewed cucumber vines will yield to fall peas, and leeks shall be seeded, and yet another, more serious attempt at sprouting broccoli. And the arrival of the garlic seed all the while my search for an adequate and free space to grow them continues. Posts are post-dated, yet may still be pertinent.