Summer's last hurrah

   This morning it is 60 degrees, headed for 75 as it has been for the past week or so.  The trees know the summer is over, having lost most of the brilliantly colored leaves of the past few weeks.  The mountains are looking barren, though the grass and clover are as green as spring, providing excellent grazing for the mountain foragers stocking up for winter.  In the bright waxing moon of last night, we could see 5 deer within yards of the back of the house, filling their bellies on the sweet clover that "Ferdinand" seeks during the day.
     The weather experts are threatening us with a "Frankenstorm," their term, not mine, a combination of winter storm and spin off of the hurricane edging up the east coast.  The warm days are over, seasonable, then cold temps are forecast for the next few days with serious winter temps in the 20's at night, not as cold as it will get later, but certainly much colder than we usually see in late October.
     As I am preparing to leave for the weekend with a friend to travel to the Ashville, NC area for a fiber festival, leaving hubby home with the pups, the morning has been spent prepping the outdoors for the winter prediction.  My rosemary shrubs that have wintered indoors for the past few winters have gotten woody and not very productive, so they were cut back along with the remaining basil and flatleaf parsley and brought in to dry on a rack in the garage.  The back deck cushions and umbrella, brushed and stored in the utility area of the basement on the upper root cellar shelves that were otherwise unused this season.  The back deck chairs, stacked and moved to the front porch that has a roof and they will be covered with a contractor's bag or tarp to keep the cats from nesting on them.

 The peppers have loved the warm sunny days and cool nights, but will not survive the next few nights, so I have picked all of them that are large enough to use for cooking and they will be diced and frozen or strung for drying to be used during the winter months.  The freeze covers on the fall greens were staked down tight, hoping to provide us with another month or two of fresh greens and the potted oregano and thyme brought in to a sunny window.  As the back of our house is south facing, there are a number of windows that serve to provide winter light to the plants brought in from the cold.

     I will return on Sunday night to find the peppers, daisies, late blooming sunflowers and iris leaves burned and brown to be cut back to the ground on the next seasonable, dry fall day.  I guess we have experienced Indian Summer or a quirk of global warming, but today is the garden's last hurrah.