Carrots, anyone?

Harvest has been over for more than a month, and we have enjoyed a beautiful long autumn. Even now, at the end of October, we haven’t had a really harsh frost, and the warm tangerine glow from the Siberian wallflower at the corner of the perennial bed is guarded by a few purple spikes of late delphiniums. Pansies, too, have not yet succumbed to the cold. 

After a couple of days with strong winds there are not many leaves left on the trees. Only the Evans cherries have managed to hang on to their glossy orange-and-gold foliage, leathery leaves flaming in the last rays of the setting sun. The wind has died down, and the air is still and almost mild. My day’s work in the garden is almost done, and I decide to just sit and watch and listen for a little while now. I lower myself on a pile of dried chickweed I raked up the day before, a warm and comfortable cushion. Leo, at first excited when I get down to his level, eventually settles down beside me. 

From the corner of my eye I notice quick movement: the flutter of two chickadees probing the blackened sunflowers for a few last seeds. Where I sit, the air is totally still, but the tops of the poplars are still swaying in the wind, the fine lacework of branches outlined against the light blue sky. High up a plane moves noiselessly, illuminated by the sun just slipped below the horizon. Suddenly, a big commotion: the chatter of many geese convening for the night in a nearby field. It sounds as if they are exchanging news of the day after arriving from different directions. Only moments later all is quiet again. It is interesting how this always happens right at sunset: they certainly know their time.

It’s time to finish up: two long rows of carrots are still waiting to be packed in boxes and brought inside. Surveying this bounty I ask myself what I was thinking when I planted them; obviously I have still not quite made the switch to a family reduced in size. It is not only that, however: for once not only growing conditions were perfect, but my ‘carrot management’ as well. I didn’t wait until the middle of July for my second planting, and, just as importantly, thinned them to the proper distance, at the proper time, as well. The result is stretching out in front of me: nice, straight, good-sized carrots, some so big that I had to pry them out of the ground, damaging a few in the process. The longest are over thirty centimetres long. 

For the last couple of years I have stored the carrots in moist sand in tubs in the cold room; that way they keep in excellent shape into spring. Even with this, however, I will have to get creative to use them all up. All through late summer and fall salads of grated carrots and apples, marinated in oil and lemon juice, salt and pepper, have been a regular part of the menu, and now I have retrieved the juicer for my Bosch kitchen machine from long years of patiently waiting in storage. Our eyesight will surely benefit from it – maybe to the point when we can say good-bye to our reading glasses? 

I heave three big boxes of carrots on the wheelbarrow and take a last survey of the garden. Whatever is left now can withstand a bit of frost: some kale, a few kohlrabi, a row of leeks, a bit of lettuce. Surprisingly, even the Swiss chard is still alive. None of that should be much affected by the rain showers  and snow flurries expected over the weekend, and if the forecast can be trusted we will have sunshine and temperatures of six or seven degrees back by the later part of next week. With luck I should be able to spend a bit more time in the garden before we leave again for South America in mid-November.