Pasture and Garden, September 5

Dennis, Annie and I went to the pasture to harvest hazelnuts. This bush provided the object featured in the recent contest. The bush, as you see, is about seven feet tall and just as wide.

Having finished this year's crop, the bush now is growing the catkins that will fertilize next year's nuts on another bush. Hazelnuts are not self-fertilizing, so this bush has a partner to swap pollen with.

After harvesting hazelnuts, we moved to the garden to harvest the dried rattlesnake beans. This huge garden spider is living among the dead vines.

Now, little remains from the summer garden to harvest, just a few tomatoes and some peppers. Peppers are very slow to set fruit and mature. Almost every year the first frost comes well before most peppers have ripened. These pimento peppers, for example, might turn red before the frost...

But these won't be big enough.

Midafternoon we went to Jeff's farm to celebrate my 75th birthday. I came home and enjoyed the best sleep I've had in ages. I even slept in until 7:30. If this is a foretaste of what it's like to be 75, I'm going to like it!