Preparing to say goodbye to the garden

Outside my window, I am savoring the final days of our bountiful garden.  After a decade of moving and living in mostly rental homes, this summer was our first with a garden. I still remember when we all piled in the car last May to travel to a local plant sale.  J-Bear was only days old and it snowed light flakes as we arrived at the sale.  The weather stayed so cold for so many days that our purchased plants lived in our dining room for over a week before I could plant them!  Eventually, though, each one of those precious plants found a loving home at our house.  There were many late nights during the summer when I stayed up late watering the garden after sundown.  Many afternoons passed while I weeded the garden as our kids played in the yard.  Now that October has arrived, we are have seen many fruits of our labors: spring lettuces long since gone to seed, strawberries, cherry tomatoes, peppers, heirloom tomatoes, basil, sage, mint and even pumpkins!  What a treat!  

As the weather turns chillier in the evenings, I find myself feeling nostalgic and wistful at the idea of saying goodbye to our fruitful plants.  I am hoping to save the strawberry plants and our jasmine vine inside this winter, perhaps even keep the geranium that is a graft off of my dad's prized plant.  I suddenly understand my father's perennial autumn pacing between his garden and garage, covering and carrying plants to safety to help them survive the first few frosty nights of fall.  Until the hard freeze arrived, he could never quite say goodbye to his carefully crafted garden.  I now understand, because neither can I.

p.s. Thanks, as always, to the Simple Woman's Daybook for the inspiration for Daybook entries.  This time around, my Daybook will be more of a weekbook, hopefully one entry one day at a time.