Squash it

Gardening provides its own way of marking the passage of time. Ours began on Christmas Day when the garlic was planted, along with a healthy cover of old hay and goat manure. Before and after that, we'd cover the garden-to-be with fallen leaves and more donations from the goat barn.

When the weather got warmer, we borrowed the neighbor's tiller several times to work the soil. As spring approached, we planted lettuce, spinach, arugula and radishes in a cold frame. By the time the weather was warm, we had a good haul of those early bloomers on the way as we planned and planted the rest.

By the time summer was in full force, tomatoes came in like crazy, followed by eggplants and peppers. (We have bad bean and corn karma for some reason.) One mark of the end of summer is the maturing of squashes. We got a pretty good haul this year. A few Georgia candy roasters are still straggling in but the garden is pretty much on automatic pilot from here on out. We're still holding out hope for some figs, which aren't altogether crazy about the West Virginia climate. Somewhere in the midst of it all are few buried potato plants.

Much of what hasn't been eaten already is canned or otherwise put away. It won't be long until we pull it all out and start again piling on the compost again.

I HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS item on the triumph of unreason.

THE GRASS MAY BE GREENER over there.

CLIMATE CHANGE. Would you get on a plane that had a 10 percent chance of crashing? Probably not. With climate change, the certainty of major changes, mostly nasty, is closer to 90 percent.

THIS IS GROSS but interesting.

GOAT ROPE ADVISORY LEVEL: ELEVATED