September is here and it brings a need to take care of a variety of chores, as the seasons begin to change. October is my very favorite month and to fully enjoy its special offerings, September must be taken care of!

I especially miss the big vegetable garden, this month. It was always a challenge to use every last bit of growing garden produce. Hoping a frost would not come, I faithfully picked every last yellow crook-neck squash. They taste better at the final picking. Beets, large and small, are easy to pickle and store in glass jars. Late in the month, tomatoes don’t ripen well, but there is much that can be done to use up the green ones: a batch of mincemeat; pickles of several kinds; and a batch fried with an onion, a green pepper, and the last small zucchini. Today this is called “stir-fry.”

It is wise to clean out the birdhouses that were occupied all summer. Also, it’s good to thoroughly clean the bird feeders and get them ready for winter customers. I leave out the hummingbird feeder till the first of October – there are occasional migrants that come to sample the syrup. I’ll enlist the help of my son to lug home a couple of large bags of bird food. In a condo, there isn’t much storage, but I fill a couple of plastic tubs in the linen closet.

It is still too early to collect a winter bouquet of dried materials, but there are always a few things to start the supply. Iris pods are ripe and soon milkweed pods and the slender pods of butterfly weeds will be ready. The flower garden produces a few early stems such as coneflowers and “money plant.”

Digging the potatoes is a fun chore. There are always a couple of odd shaped specimens and two or three very large ones. I always saved the very small ones and cooked them, skins on, and with just a little butter. It was a special treat.

The last of the onions and cucumbers were sliced thin as paper, and pickled. The last few ears of corn and whatever else was available went into a “chow” and the day we made a few jars of tomato sauce with the last picking of red ones, the whole house smelled good.

Several times we raised a few large sunflowers. It is necessary to watch them very carefully this time of year – the birds will get them first if you don’t. I dried them in back of the wood stove and saved them till dead of winter. It is fun to watch the birds pull out a seed and fly off to crack it open. Once I tried to cut and dry a huge bush of thistles, but the goldfinches had found them and had spoiled my plans.

This is the time to have a last barbecue – hot foods and some ears of corn cooked in their husks. We sit around the fire and make plans to get in winter’s wood for the fireplace come October. A few lazy weekends are possible and there is time to clean up the yard and mow the lawn a last time – hopefully!

When we were still going to Vermont some weekends, I stocked up on a few tins of maple syrup for gift giving, apples by the bushel to make into applesauce, and a supply of nutmegs at the country store. I use them in many things, and keep a good supply on hand. Laurie gets them for me, now.

In Monroe, six or eight families with children had a fall “boot exchange.” We had a big porch and everyone came and brought boots, rubbers, hiking shoes – even skis that no longer fit. We almost always were able to find something useful and what didn’t fit anyone, we gave to the social worker to give away. We also included skates, an item a child outgrows quickly.

The words ending the August 25th column were by Warren G. Harding.

What poem began with these words? “Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered weak and weary…”