Last harvest

Today marks another milestone on the wheel of the year: the last harvest. We went out this morning and cleared away everything from our garden beds. We got several small clumps of broccoli off our broccoli plants (which never yielded a single compact head but instead grew into massive baobabs with tiny little heads of edible broccoli) and a whole big bowlful of arugula (which had apparently been growing there quietly all autumn, concealed by the weeds, until we cleared them away). After pulling out all the dead tomato vines and (we hope) all the dandelions, we made the beds nice and snug for winter with a six-inch blanket of leaves—gathered from our neighbors' curbs, since our own yard doesn't get enough leaves to fill even one bed—and, to bring in the winter properly, filled up the bird feeder. And so here we are, all settled in for winter—and if we start craving a taste of summer during the long dark nights ahead, we'll have a nice batch of arugula pesto all stashed away in the freezer.