Ending the garden for now...Harvesting

Harvest is starting here.  I am pulling out the onions and storing them in bags. The carrots are going into plastic buckets. The blessing of the drought is that the cold weather is holding off for another week or so.  So this week I'll be pulling things in and tilling the ground and finishing up areas where the plants are done.  I decided that I am going to put up a small hoop house.  It may give me some choices on an earlier spring and a little more weather control for next year.  Anyway I need to get it up now in order to have the structure ready for Spring. The little apple trees [two years] are having a few apples.  Good eating!  Just not enough yet.  So I will spend some afternoons in the orchard, cleaning up around each tree and setting in braces and wire cages to keep them mouse and rabbit proof over the winter.   I am pretty happy to be a gardener.  These projects feel good and it is nice to see things fixed up.  Of course the trees are turning yellow and orange so I know the seasons are moving along. And I can do my fussing now when it is nice or do it later when it is 40 degrees, wet and windy.  It is so good to have choices.

Speaking of choices.... This year I have a torn rotor in my shoulder, two sprained thumbs and a torn thigh muscle.  All of these are slow healing and painful.  I could quit doing this work.  But I believe in it.  I am setting the framework/schedule to heal and strengthen myself during the gardening 'off season.'  I have to do it before I can write about it.  But I have made my decision.