Season's End

 

This was the final harvest of summer vegetables made one week ago.

The weather service had forecast a low in the low 20s Fahrenheit for two nights in a row, with last Monday night being the first. 

I spent that day scrambling, not only to pick the last of the summer vegetables, but also to cover the cold season crops with blankets and sheets, hoping it would be enough to let them survive. Twenty degrees might not kill them, but they wouldn't look pretty afterward, especially since the temps had not gone down gradually enough to allow the plants to prepare for the cold.

It was a long day. I worried that the covers over my kale and lettuce and cabbage would not be enough, but I hoped. Tuesday morning the temperature was 26 degrees F. Not so bad. The next morning it was 20, and that was on our porch right next to the wall of the house.

With rising temperatures and sun that afternoon, plus a more reasonable low forecast for the next morning, I pulled off the sheets and blankets. To my relief, very few leaves sustained cold damage. Even the lettuce, the most tender of them all looked hale and hearty. It was beautiful.

The lettuce had also been covered with shade cloth to protect it from the hot sun, and I left it on as I added the cover of blankets. Since the weather had cooled somewhat, I removed the shade cloth, folded everything up and put it away.

And the deer came during the night and ate down all my lettuce.

I can't fault them, really. It's been dry, dry, dry. The grass is dry and brown and the lettuce was juicy and green. Which would you choose.

They even nibbled at the radicchio! The bitter radicchio. Weird deer.

So I've covered the radicchio, cabbage, and the baby lettuce that they had spared. If we get enough of the appropriate weather, we might have a little lettuce yet.