Ora et Labora

Fall                                                               Autumn Moon

Frost last night, but no freeze.  Either way, not too damaging for us.  Our harvest of above ground bearing vegetables and fruits is almost over.  Left are root crops like leeks and carrots, a few onions, some beets and a late crop of kale and chard.  All of these are frost hardy, even freeze hardy.

I have another leek dish to make, a leek gratin.  Will have several leeks left after that so I may have to return to the chicken pot pies or leek and potato soup.  Both are good.

All in all a good gardening year except for the failure of my bee management plan and the theft of our honeycrisp crop by those #$!%XXX squirrels.  Looks like I pulled out a save with the bees by going with over wintering.  Just no honey this year.  Next year.  Good thing Artemis honey is not a for profit business.

Ruth Hayden commented on our gardening and bees as not about poverty, but “…about creativity.”  In the broadest sense, yes.  In the particular though Kate enjoys the Iowa farm mom aspect of putting food by:  drying, canning, freezing, storing.  Both of us enjoy and I find essential the spiritual aspect of gardening, the close connection to the soil, to the source of our food, to the seasons, to the vagaries of weather and the changing of climate.

You might say our garden is our church, or, better really, our meditation and our sutra, our bible.  Ora et labora.  Work and prayer is the Benedictine motto.  I like it too.  Work as prayer, especially work with plants.