It's the end of the season this year for our veggie garden. Yesterday I made one last sweep of the produce, took down the deer fencing and heaped loads of clippings onto the compost pile. There were five gallon Ziploc bags full of different lettuce varieties, baby carrots, baby yellow neck squash, cucumbers, and loads of zucchini and basil. Today I'll make a few transplants of thyme into pots to bring in for the winter and snip the rest to dry. With all of the basil, I was able to make a few half-pints of pesto to freeze; summertime flavor to savor when the snow falls.

Being my first year to plant a veggie garden, next year I'll know not to plant as much zucchini ... it is prolific and takes up way too much space. Sow the seeds in early June, leaving a few empty rows to accommodate some later plantings. Use some type of either black plastic mulch around the base of the tomato plants ... or some type of water bag sleeves that radiate heat that my neighbor used. Soon I'll post a picture of my green tomatoes.

The best part of having a garden: Fresh food, fresh air, sunshine, working with my hands, getting dirty, tired sore muscles, eating food without pesticides grown about as local as you can get.