Slowing Down

Today I picked tomatoes in the greenhouse. Picking tomatoes is the one garden chore I allow myself to do on Sunday. While I was picking tomatoes, about 50# of them, my mother dropped in. We have some of our best talks in the greenhouse or while we are gardening. We both marveled at the tomato production, the size of the cucumbers and the abundance of the basil. We also both agreed that it is definitely fall. It's not the leaves turning color, the shorter daylight hours or the fact that the peas are about gone that has clued us into the fact that fall has arrived. It is that we are slowing down. In the spring and throughout the summer we both have boundless energy! There are just not enough hours in the day to do all we want to do in the gardens and greenhouses so we will work late into the nights and yet every morning we are both wide awake and ready to go by 5:30. No one in my household understands this, so I literally sneak out to the greenhouse, flower beds or gardens and start working, or is it playing? I know it is fall when I can sleep until 6:00 or 6:30 and not jump out of bed with enthusiasm. I also find it easy to quit at 5:30 in the evenings and not go back outside after dinner. This tells me it is fall. My mother, who is 76, is just like me. We say we have a gardening illness which hits in the spring and leaves us in the fall. It's a good thing fall has come because I think if we kept up the summer pace any longer we would do ourselves some serious damage. It is a good thing we don't live in a place where we could garden year round!