Half done!

Yesterday, we hit the halfway mark on the garden. That’s right, baby! Half done! Now, I love the garden – true – but we do the garden to grow things. When it is half harvested? Well, that not only signals that we’re halfway done with working in the garden, but that we have also just about guaranteed our harvest. With half of it done, we know an approximation of our yield, particularly because the riskiest things have already been largely harvested.

So, what’s the yield and what’s left to go? Well, so far, we’ve harvested 80 pounds of regular potatoes – that’s Adirondack reds and blues and both russets and German butterballs. Since we only have one-and-a-bit of potatoes left to go, 80 pounds is pretty fabulous. As for what’s left? Well that would be the full row of German butterballs and about 4 plants of russets. So far, everyone’s done a fabulous job but the russets. They got rained out and they’re a little more subject to rot than the other potatoes.

We’ve also harvested about 65 pounds of tomatoes and the tomato freezer is full, indicating another successful year. I would guess that we probably have another 40 or so pounds of tomatoes to come in yet. Elsewhere? The beets are harvested and we got 20 pints. Not fabulous, but not horrible either. I’ll have to supplement with the local farm beets, but I’ll get us enough for the year. Garlic and onions are all harvested and those did well. Over 50 garlic bulbs and 100 onions. We’re set for the year. What’s left in the garden are tomatoes, the one row of potatoes, a row of carrots, two celery plants and two full rows of beans – red, white and black.

All in all, this is the earliest the garden has ever gotten harvested and honestly, it’s a pretty good yield overall. I’m not disappointed on either front.

It dawns on me that as we harvest the garden, we’re just over halfway through August with my favorite-ist season just around the bend. With fall comes the inevitable work to clean up leaves and prepare the fallow garden for next year, but there is also the launch to all of the fall and winter holidays, which rock my world. Plus, the simplicity of the yard winding down – to needing mowed every other week – leading the way for the outdoor work to wane until it becomes nothing for a few weeks (and then the snow flies) means that we will have more time to just be.

And again, with the work inside dwindling down now that we have largely finished renovations, I’m looking forward to a holiday season and beyond to figure out how real people live.

This Christmas season, Darryl is hoping to take a few extra days off to give himself two full weeks off over the season. Since we will be home for the holidays, that gives us two full weeks (minus Christmas) to finish up the upstairs and work in a little holiday cheer. With a little pre-work in September, October and November, we can set ourselves up that when we both go back to work in early January, the house will be D-U-L-N, DONE, as my dad would say.

All in all, the theme in my life since this past March when I quit my job is emerging fairly clearly: get efficient, get done and smooth the path ahead. Already, those efforts are bearing fruit – just like the garden. Upstairs, I can say I have eliminated most of my “black holes” (i.e. junk drawers, closet stashes, etc.) and we can begin our new life in our renovated house without much fuss or chaos. We still have the basement to clear out, but that can wait until this winter, when we have nothing left to do. At that point, we will also be able to get rid of a bunch of building supplies and generally just trim the lot down there by 20% everywhere.

The garden being half-done, therefore, is largely symbolic of our life. As we accomplish another task with the garden, it shortens the list, reduces the chaos and even makes all of the things left to do that much easier.

Half done, huh? Well, I guess it’s so much better than half-baked.