"Better Luck Next Year"

Baseball and gardening share a season and a set of emotions. This year by August I had pretty much given up on both. The Rockies and Royals were bad, the squash beetles had spread whatever disease causes cucumbers and zucchinis to wilt over night, the tomatoes were sickly and the deer had discovered they like chili pepper plants.

September brought renewed excitement. The Cubs really were going to make it to the playoffs. Dill and basil plants were furiously producing new leaves and the okra had started to develop.

For October, I pinned my hopes on some upstarts. The volunteer tomatoes were completely disease free and laden with green tomatoes, and why not support the awful to great underdogs of the Rays?

And then it is was over. There is something very final about the first frost. The green tomatoes were not canned as tasty condiments. The single eggplant from the entire crop dangled unfilled on the plant. The basil was black. The okra plants themselves were too slimy to pull. The World Series ended without a victory for the Rockies, the Cubs, the Royals, or even the Rays. In both cases, it is all over.

Until next year.

Next year there will be peas and spinach and onions galore. We'll plant spring and fall greens. We'll start lots of bulb fennel and shallots and kohlrabi and leeks. We'll improve our defense with a better deer fence. We'll deter the squash beetles by not letting even a single volunteer gourd grow. I'll make pesto over and over again. They'll be so much bounty we'll need to buy a pressure cooker.

The Rockies will pitch better. The Royals will hit better. The Cubs will win some in October. Mom will weep because the Cubs should have done it once while Grandpa was alive. We'll surely have better luck next year. Next year will be the year it all happens.

But then what will we hope for next November?

*Photo of our neighbor's silver maple tree which was pollarded into this back in September.