I love this time of year--the leaves falling smell so good, and I'm piling up what I can on the compost and I have a sprinkler set on top to water it in, kind of hold it down (if it is a lot of loose leaves) and start planning for next year.

Chard in the garden is tasty and beautiful, there are still a few onions and stray carrots out there amongst the oregano. The eggplant have been severely trimmed back and I'm going to try mulching the roots heavily and see if anything survives to sprout in the spring. We had an eggplant hedge this summer and in addition to eating a lot and freezing a lot of eggplant Parmesan and canning a lot, I gave tons away. I literally carried eggplants into my office by the bucket-full, and bless their hearts, my co-workers were up the the challenge. They either love eggplant or they don't, but those who do ate well this summer. :)

I'm going to invite a few of the neighborhood gardeners, from this end of the street down near the bridge, over for an informal meeting over the holidays to see if we can coordinate our gardens a little. I could have used more tomatoes this year, and I'm going to plant onions so I expect to have a lot extra. I'd love to see us average out the results of our gardening so we all have a good supply of veggies next summer. We're urban gardeners with over-size lots and we like to putter in our yards. I'd like to see if we can donate some of our extra to a local food pantry. I think we're all organic gardeners on this end of the block.

I think I'll pull out a tray of frozen eggplant Parmesan to serve at the party meeting.

SRS