Just a quiet morning

Sitting here plucking basil leaves while the photos downloaded. Last night made crabapple jelly til late that didn't come out as sour as I like but is a gorgeous pinky color. Yum time for winter mornings.
I wanted to write about the nothing which is the fullness of a morning here in silence. (Michael is finishing up the strawbale workshop in Concow.) Yesterday I bought starts at Little Red Hen, a nursery I support because they hire and foster disabled folks and their $$ go to provide services for people with autism spectrum disorders. The photo above is their heavenly blue morning glory fence. You have to be brave to have morning glories since they like to take over but the depth of the blue really is heaven to sink into.

My morning of transplanting the winter starts began with catching morning light on the complicated brainy deep red of the coxcombs. All the while I was fretting about how to finish on time at the clinic on fridays and about how to stop annexation of the farmland around here, while watching the jays on the sunflowers and finches on the primrose, weeding, harvesting, dead heading, wandering my little queendom. Eventually my cares soothed away.

The gleaming flowers of the gourds a few posting ago have become small waisted full sized gourds of pale green. Their course is to stay in the garden until they are mottled, moldy, and brown. Some will rot, others will harden. I don't know why some things are profusely successful and other things succumb but the fall part of the cycle is here and I'm planting with a beckon to spring, harvesting, and watching.

One last burst of the luscious gold of the sunflower! These are the symbol of the peak of life, of our link to our health and short lovely time here. (That's why the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons campaigns use the sunflower... the solar link of being just perfectly blessed by harmony with the sun's strength and not destroyed by the hubris of radiation. That is our fragile sun story for another year.)

Our neighbor Bruce is a Master Farmer. He often has excess on Saturdays after Farmers Market. My peppers are small and tight..something is missing in my soil but his are gorgeous. He put out a mix of peppers, cukes, and lettuce on his share table and they were the first thing I saw on our porch table today. Fresh light and vitamins be in your safe and organic food as peppers brighten and finish up these last weeks of summer harvest.