Hawthorn Hill: Some end of summer thoughts

Columns

Discussion

COMMENTING ON STORIES:

Welcome to our story comments feature. We welcome your thoughts and your opinions, including the unpopular ones. We only ask that you keep your conversations clean, civil and on the topic of the story you are commenting on.

Coinciding with our websites redesign, we launched our new story comments feature through Disqus.

Disqus gives users the ability to log into our story comments feature so that they may be able to track their conversations, receive emails when their comments get a reply or to even have your comments update onto your Facebook or Twitter accounts.

For the time being, our story comments feature will continue to have the ability to post comments anonymously. We reserve the right to require registration in the future using your name and verified email address.

Not all comments are deemed printable. Some are disqualified at the newspaper’s discretion for a number of different reasons. Please follow our Online Rules of Conduct at all times.

RULES OF CONDUCT:

We reserve the right to remove comments that are unacceptable, to wit:

1. False and inacurate statements.
2. Personal attacks. Explicit name-calling.
3. Harassing, harmful, vulgar, obscene and defamatory language.
4. Threatening statements or statements that suggest violence.
5. Hate speech of any kind.
6. Intolerant comments on religion, race, age, gender, sexual preference or disabilities.
7. Accusations of criminal activity.
8. Content that is harmful to children and minors in any way.
9. References to any type of sexual activity and other private matters.
10. Random and inflammatory statements that are off topic.
11. Advertising of any kind.
12. Typing in all caps.

WE ENCOURAGE REASONABLE AND COURTEOUS COMMENTS THAT:

1. Create conversation on issues of interest and concern to fellow readers and local community members.
2. Express opinions and contrarian views.
3. Stimulate debate with respectful language.
4. Stay within the boundaries of these rules.

WE RESERVE THE RIGHT TO SUSPEND OR TERMINATE ACCESS FOR:

1. Violating any of these Online Rules of Conduct.
2. Deliberately disrupting discussions with repetitive messages, meaningless messages or spam.
3. Misrepresentation of identity or impersonating another user.

WE WELCOME:

1. Flagging violations of these rules that you observe to our attention.

MONITORING:

We monitor comments regularly Monday - Friday, 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Approval of comments outside of this time will be sporadic.

comments powered by Disqus

October 2, 2009

Hawthorn Hill: Some end of summer thoughts

Anonymous The Cooperstown Crier Fri Oct 02, 2009, 08:43 AM EDT

Gardeners love to swap information with one another. They also find solace in sharing their woes. It is always comforting to know that one is not alone, that others have suffered through similar setbacks.

It is much more fun to chat about successes. But failures do have their virtues and if one takes a long view of things they can be quite instructive.

The optimistic side of my brain certainly hopes that is the case. My garden notebook is already filling up with next year’s do’s and don’ts.

The clinker is remembering to look at them come spring. I have always been more adept at planning than the more crucial step, carry through.

A close friend has characterized this as the ``summer of the cucumber.’’ By that he means that everybody seemed to have had bumper cucumber crops despite the lousy weather through most of July and August.

That has been the case up here on the hill. Friends and family have walked off with oodles of cucumbers and every time we visit our kids in New York and Boston they get a load of cukes, like it or not.

The only downside to cucumber summer has been the late arrival of a powdery mildew that is gleefully dusting the foliage of quite a few plants. The good news is the harvest is in.

The bad news is that it is an augury of summer’s end and winter’s imminence that is a bit hard to swallow, especially now that we are experiencing the summer we never had.

As I observed to a friend last week, nature always gets its way. Our only option is to roll with her always unpredictable punches.

This summer will certainly be remembered for the late blight that devoured all of our tomatoes.

But the hill archive now includes a notation recording the first ever hill zucchini failure! Several plants produced a fair number of fruits.

The best producers were volunteers sprouting from last year’s crop. Most, however, started out looking pale, maintained their wan miens throughout the summer, despite being fed ample organic nutrient supplements, and ended their lives a few days ago every bit as wimpy as they were several months ago. We have no idea what caused their stunted growth. Next spring we will plant a different variety, one that we have always have had success with.

Perhaps the variety we grew just did not like it here very much. Who knows? As I stated to a gardener friend a few days ago, next summer we will experiment less, both with respect to planting and variety selection, and stick to the basics that have stood us in good stead over the years.

It used to be that I could count on Gabby to ward off all unwanted critters. It has also been the 'summer of the critter.’ Rabbits, moles, and a dazzling array of winged creatures have been dining on our leafiest, most succulent plants. Not quite as peppy as she used to be, Gabby’s dominant activity is passive sightseeing.

She still sits on the deck invoking a sentry-like posture, but if a rabbit scoots across the lawn right in front it merits a yawn at best. She used to love to snoot around for moles and chipmunks, but these days she seems not to have the oomph do more than offer a cursory sniff and then turn to more important matters.

A brief snooze, for instance.

At age ninety-one her indifference is well earned. I know in my heart that we will not walk the gardens together forever. I also know that tomato and zucchini crop failures pale in the face of that timeless reality