Clean Up Time

With all of the excitement of the kitchen remodel, prep for the start of the school year, and getting my daughter off to summer camp for the week the garden has fallen into neglect.  It doesn't help that I'm avoiding being out there too often, since the green tomatoes are distinctly depressing me.

So it's time to get out there and do some tidying up.  Now is the time to pull any new weeds, sweep off the patio, pick up trash, trim the flowers back, and start collecting seed from the plants that are finished.  I've already gotten a handful of Speedy bush bean seeds, but the biggest seed collection to happen will be the peas and sunflowers.  Only one Mammoth sunflower was grown this year, mostly because it was a volunteer and I couldn't bear to just rip it out.  But it certainly did well and lived up to it's name; nearly ten feet tall with a single flower the size of my head! 

It is probably also time to bring in the onions that have been curing on the patio table, before we start to get rain.  In my area the rain usually starts with school, as do the colder temps. 

So off I go to get these things done, and get the garden back into decent shape before it all gets cleared out for the winter.

(For anyone who's wondering why I don't plant a fall garden; the fence behind my beds is south facing and by late September both of the beds will be shaded completely.)