This Morning in the September Garden

We headed to the garden this morning, my little helpers and I. The animals had been milked and Daddy and Elijah were working at a neighbor’s house for the morning so it was my four youngest buddies and I. The okra, once again, needed picking and all of us were ready to head outside.

The pumpkins are nearly done, at least the main patch. A second patch was planted a few weeks late and they are still ripening. We now have a root cellar with pumpkins sitting in its depths. I can hardly believe it.

Do you remember when I decided to plant seed balls? I kind of figured most of that seed was old and anything that came up would just be a bonus and maybe cover the ground a bit in the meanwhile. I hadn’t been out to the “field” portion of the chicken field in at least a week because, well, okra.

Leafy greens are something I am always trying to get into our daily diet and they are costly so we are forever trying (and often failing) to grow more and more. Much to my delight I found a good deal of large, harvestable mustard and turnip greens along with enough sweet potato greens for several weeks of salad. We have had very little rain and zero irrigation since I planted those and what a gift they truly are!

As an aside, this little lady likes her sunhats. And she generally skips out on the picking beans thing we came to the garden for and instead quietly tiptoes her way through the chicken field in her ongoing pursuit of sneaking up on the illusive grasshoppers.

And Mister Man here likes to play the kind of hide-and-seek that gets Mama’s heart racing. Let’s just say that I am thankful for a garden with a gate… that locks him in because he excels at hiding.

While the okra factor is getting almost comical at this point, I really am very grateful for every little bit that we harvest. It is all a gift but I am guessing you are tired of hearing about okra so we’ll just move along…

… to delivering a wheelbarrow of weeds to the cows and goats.

And then I came in to water our fall starts since the ones we threw in the ground didn’t make it. You just never really know when those seeds go in the ground what might come of them but we trust the Lord knows exactly what we need and surely we are not owed any of it. So every leaf or pod or pumpkin or egg or quart of milk that comes to our table is truly a gift.

So sometimes the seeds just don’t grow, and sometimes you get a patchy field of unexpected greens… and okra! Did I mention I added okra to my seed ball mix? Oh yes I did. The squash and pumpkin and tomato seeds that we added never did sprout but the okra, well it is some kind of irony that it looks absolutely fantastic.

Good soil, gratitude, and a sense of humor are probably equally important when gardening. And, apparently, so is a good pickled okra recipe.