A PICTURE IS WORTH A THOUSAND WORDS

This is one of the first pictures I took with our digital camera. It's an artichoke flower. In my estimation, it is the most beautiful bloom in the vegetable kingdom.
Our garden plots are looking good. Weeks of raiding construction sites and dumpster diving for rejected wood finally paid off. We got our raised beds up, and they are planted with fall veggies.
Today is the first day that feels like fall is here. High winds and rain, and a temperature reading less than 85 degrees. We can leave summer behind and welcome the fall with open arms. Time to bring out the jackets, and add a blanket to the bed, and turn off the overhead fans. Time to turn off the air conditioner and turn on the oven and bake, and take long hot baths.

THINGS I'LL NEVER DO AGAIN

When we bought our house thirteen years ago, we discovered there was a privacy issue with the half-way house behind our property. There was nothing but a chain link fence between our back yard and this undesirable neighbor.
I thought a permanent solution would be to plant some bamboo next to the fence, Over the years, it grew, and spread. Some of the stalks rose some twenty feet up.


About three years ago, Carlos brought home a small potted plant called fo-ti. He was told it liked to grow next to a fence, so I planted it next to the bamboo. I watched it grow, twirling its way in and out of the chain links, filling in all the gaps until it looked like a solid green curtain of leaves. Quite pretty, and very private. Eventually, it wound its way to the top of the bamboo plants and latched on to the nearby trees.


I began to worry the fo ti was going to take over the entire area, so I took it upon myself to get rid of it. I found that in order to do this, I had to chop down all the bamboo plants. The removal of the visible parts of these plants was tedious, yet simple enough. Nothing, really, compared to the network of roots I have unearthed, so thick and tough I can hardly get a pitch fork or shovel through it. It has turned into a full blown project. I swear I'll never plant another bamboo shoot, much less an innocent looking monster like fo ti.