Hold On
This morning in the garden.
I walked through crispy leaves and the air smelled like fall.
A lap through the garden reminds me that it’s still summer. The sweat on my lip after planting a bed reminds me, too.
My brain whispers, It’s September. A word that floods my brain with change and memories and images of fall. Hold on, I tell myself.
Hold on.
So I planted some seeds and said hi to the bees.
September is a Bridge
One day whispers of summer. The next, of fall. Most days carry signs of both. As a homesteader, we have a foot in each season as well.
In September, we hold on to the time we have left with the warm air and hot sun. We plant peas, lettuce, green beans, carrots, beets, spinach, endive and a few others. Many will be harvested right up until our first fall frost rolls in, about 6-8 weeks from now. Others will carry us deep into fall, thriving off the cool weather.
In September, we let go of the long days. Dusk is coming earlier and earlier, making my evening routine of gardening after putting the kids to bed a thing of the past. Instead, I am turning inward. Using that time for writing (something I envisioned making time for in August, but chose to be outdoors instead), reading, and planning.
My sourdough starter is now comfortably bubbling away on my counter every day instead of spending most of its time in the fridge. Our meal plans look a lot heartier, full of slower cooker stews, single pot rice dishes (I recently made a recipe for Cuban black beans and rice and the method used for cooking rice is now the only way I will cook it), and chili for football on Sundays. I’ve given up on putting away my canning pot, jars, and stock pot at this point in the season. They cycle their way from the stovetop to the counter to the dining room table in a constant shuffle to make space in our small home and kitchen.
I’ve started to let go of my tomatoes. The vines are long with lots of crispy leaves and the fruits are getting smaller and smaller. It’s felt like a poor year since we’ve been battling our trellis since June, but a count of the jars in our pantry (just a fancy way to say basement) tells me otherwise. We’ve put up about 50, if not more, (mostly pint-sized) jars of tomato sauce, pizza sauce, and plain tomatoes this summer. I feel the push and the pull of this time of year in the decision to pull plants. I know I have put up a ton of tomatoes for us to use year-round, but I can’t help feeling the creep of scarcity mindset telling me to do more, more, MORE. There is some truth to this thinking as it seems that when I grow and can tomatoes in a versatile way, being mostly pizza sauce (just tomatoes, onions, and garlic) or plain tomato sauce, I end up cooking with it more. It’s this beautiful cycle born out of eating and living seasonally and proof that not all our effort and work is for naught. We are actually eating the things we grow (a question I get from homestead skeptics). We can mold and bend towards a more seasonal lifestyle.
Seeds are everywhere in my September garden. Cosmos, zinnias, marigolds. Basil, borage, amaranth, pinto beans. I’ve started taking walks through the garden with my seed bowl, a small wooden bowl that’s the last of a set we were given for our wedding that somehow made its way from our kitchen to our garage and has now become my dedicated seed collector. I fill it with flower heads or hold it under herbs as I shake their seeds loose. It’s rewarding to save the seeds from plants grown in the garden. So rewarding, in fact, that I forget to notice that it’s the last stage of the plant’s lifecycle.
September is Easy
We’re hosting a kids’ gardening class this weekend themed around saving the harvest. It’s the last class of the season and despite some requests to add one for October, I am listening to that feeling of rightness in closing the first season of hosting these classes with a theme that, to me, screams celebration. Like September, the theme “saving the harvest” conjures this paradigm between holding on and letting go. Like saving seeds, the act of celebrating the harvest eases us into the idea of change. We are simultaneously holding on and letting go.
The beauty of letting go in September is that there’s still time to grow. I can pull my tomatoes and plant peas or cover crops. The decision doesn’t weigh heavy on my soul because I’m not saying goodbye to the garden, I’m just saying goodbye to one crop. One row. One Bed.
The leaves from our mulberry trees seemed to have fallen overnight (and no, we haven’t gotten any rain…in like a month…we’re thirsty!). That is true. But September has a way about it that eases us from summer to fall. We notice most of the changes happening gradually, almost romantically, in a way that allows us to adjust to the change subconsciously.
September is Reflection
I’m full of some of the happiest memories come September. Standing on a wooden kitchen chair, peeling apples into the sink with my grandma. Playing field hockey with my best friend. The coziness of back-to-school, new routines, apple pies, dark evenings, and this feeling of being. I find myself settling into these memories and feelings despite not having to head to back-to-school or send my kids to school (my oldest is 3). Instead, these vibes manifest through reflection.
Reflection, to me, is not a singular process. It is not looking back. It is not looking forward. Somehow, it’s both at the same time. And therefore, it makes perfect sense that it’s something we lean into during the bridge month of September.
In the garden, we’ve laid down tarps to extend our inground garden rows by about 4 feet. As I mentioned earlier, our tomato trellis has been a bit of flop this year from the start. At this point in my career as a gardener, I’ve tried about every type of trellis you can imagine, and while I know that come this time of the year most of them result in the same thing - a tomato jungle - I would like a system that holds up well into August. We’ve decided the winner is to use a cattle panel installed with t-posts so it stands up straight (the short side) and gives us 16’ of sturdy fencing to clip tomatoes to. Our current rows are only about 12’ long, so we will extend them to be able to fit one panel each.
Weeds have been a problem this year. While we haven’t lost any harvest to weeds, they became more than what we could keep up with. We will prioritize the winter months to suffocating the weeds with sheet mulch or tarps and getting more mulch on them. I foresee this being an ongoing effort.
On the homemade side of things, I created a new routine for baking, cooking, planning, and prepping when it comes to our meals. It was a priority of mine for August and I have been able to stick with it. I’m sure no one is surprised, but when I don’t have good food to eat or feed my family I go bananas. The trick is to build a plan with flexibility and always have a backup. I do this by creating lists with the number of meals instead of assigning meals to days. I also switched from doing this weekly to doing it biweekly and it’s been a lot more manageable for me. I’m looking forward to carrying this routine through September.
September is Fast
I just paused as I was writing this, thinking about how best to close. Before rereading it I had this overwhelming vision for the month ahead as a slow, calm, and peaceful month. The reality is much different. With one foot in summer and one foot in fall, our minds and tasks are pushed in a lot of opposing directions this month. We’re holding on to summer, tending to the garden and its bounty. We’re letting go of long days by squeezing as much life into the sunlight as possible. We’re squirreling away. Settling in. And celebrating.
What I’m Reading in September
The Heiress by Rachel Hawkins
Book Lovers by Emily Henry
The Book of Cin by HM Wolfe
Greenwood by Michael Christie
Upcoming…
Yoga in the Garden with Rae of Tree Folk Fables on October 12th
Seed Folk Gathering on November 10th
This was absolutely wonderful, Laura! Thank you for the reminder to savor every moment of this lovely month. 😊