Reflections on the Fourth Week of Fall – Unexpected

    “I wasn't ready for fall,” Spence said and bent to finger a frost-blackened winter squash leaf. “Time to put the garden to bed for the winter.”

    The calendar, a week of nippy mornings, and several weeks of leaves changing color had acclimated me, but I hadn't done my fall garden chores either. The last time I'd picked blueberries was September first. Since berries wouldn't form till next summer, now was the time to remove the blueberry tents we'd constructed in June.

    We had built frames with PVC pipes. Spence wound three foot high chicken wire around the bottom of the frames to discourage raccoons and to give pollinators access. I covered the top with reemay, agricultural cloth that lets in sunlight and water but keeps out bugs and birds. With bull clips and cable ties (strips of grooved plastic that feed through cubed knuckles to hold bunches of electrical cables together), I attached the cloth to the frames. All summer the blueberry tents adorned the garden like ghostly sentries.

    Monday, under a the sunny, October-blue sk, I hung a plastic grocery store bag on my belt and carried aviation snips to the blueberry tent in the north garden. Squeezing rusted levers, I freed bull clips and dropped them into the bag. Clink. I snipped cable ties and stuffed them into my pocket. Because I'd pulled many ties too tight last June, I couldn't slip the blades under the plastic. Regretting I wasn't a raccoon to shred the cloth with claws, I angled the snips around the plastic fastener knuckles. Teeth gritting and two hands pressing, I cut. Reemay flapped.

    Bugs had entered through the chicken wire. Many tried to exit through the reemay. Spiders took advantage of the bugged-brained critters and built webs. I met these hungry spiders and the trapped bugs while I snipped. A grape sized, red-with-white-dotted orb-weaver spider hung from the northwest corner of the tent. I tiptoed past and freed the other sides of the cloth. Wind blew the spider away. When I pulled the cloth off the PVC frame, dead earwigs  fell onto my head. I shook them off me and the cloth. Then I folded the cloth for next year.

    More bugs waited in south garden tents. A black spider, the size of a black widow, landed on my sleeve. Preferring to call it a black house spider, I brushed it off and kept working.

    Spence said, “I could use the cloths to protect my peppers.”

    “Fine with me.” Without shaking or folding, I dumped the cloths in a pile.

    He gathered the buggy fabric in his arms and walked to the pepper patch.

    I uncovered a Late Blue bush and shouted, “Ripe berries!” Late Blue bushes usually fruit from the beginning of July through the first week of August. I picked a dark blue, firm globe. A ripe berry indeed. With a handful of berries, I hustled to show Spence.

    “Who'd have thought?” He bent to spread a cover cloth over his Hungarian Hot Wax peppers. It blew off. He grabbed it and placed it over the peppers again. “Better check your beans.”

    I unfastened my belt and handed him the plastic bag. Maybe the bull clips would weigh down the cloth to keep it over the peppers.

    Heading to the house for my picking bucket, I ate half the berries. Super sweet–not the sweet-tart of the earlier blueberries. At the waste basket I emptied my bulging pocket. Cable ties flowed like a string of never ending scarves from clown's sleeve. Back in the garden, I picked straggling purple beans and three cups of strawberries.

    Blueberries, purple beans, and strawberries weren't ready for fall either.