A killing frost

Despite my neglect of my yard this year, in favour of finishing the ms., in favour of avoiding the summer's bad weather, when it came time to strip down the garden, it took me most of the evening to process the bounty.

The thing that made me happiest was the two bunches of rosemary I pulled off my rosemary plant.

Rosemary is my favourite herb. It looks and smells sort of pine-y but something about it transports me the way Xmas trees can't.

It says roast chicken all through the house, roast chicken greeting people at the door before I can.

(Maybe that's because our last Xmas tree, that we cut ourselves from an Xmas tree farm, had been partially spray painted green.

And didn't smell like very much.)

Anyways, I also got a laundry basket-full of ornately shaped green tomatoes and multiple bunches of last year's mint, which appeared elsewhere in the garden.

And oregano and lemon thyme.

These last I strung up, but I popsickled my sparse but fragrant basil plants, on the advice of the internet.

And now I must return to the ms.

But it was distinctly satisfying, even when I made an 11 pm raid on what was left of the basil, the chill, the night.