Last Chance Cafe

On Sunday, I put the garden to ‘bed’ for the Winter.  Cabbages, fennel, a runner bean plant and one corn plant are still in the ground, but the rest have been retired. I thanked them for all their gifts and admired them one last time as I dug them up and put them into the compost to nourish next year’s seeds.

I spread compost out onto the beds and topped this with wood shavings that I adopted from a neighbour. On the way into town last weekend, I saw someone with a chainsaw chopping stacks of logs. I asked if he was going to discard the scraps and the answer was yes. I said I’d be happy to take some for my garden and could fill some bags on my way back.  By the time I returned, he had filled a large dog food bag for me and I was good to go! I had initially thought it would be perfect for protecting the front garden from frost since there is some exposed soil this year, but decided that it would be put to better use nourishing the vegetable patch.

After tucking in the garden, we tucked into a meal from the absolute last edible bits from the plants. While we had the last ‘co-ordinated’ crop a few weeks ago, this was a day to consume anything else. The edible zucchini leaves were dead so we did not eat them, but I had Honey on the case to try and figure out if squash stalks were edible.  We couldn’t figure it out so didn’t cook any. Still, the 8-10 zucchini buds, handful of green tomatoes, bok choy and a few runner beans made a very nice dish from the Last Chance Cafe.