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end of tomato season
Friday, November 5 2010
Rain eventually came to an end today, and it had been enough to inundate the parts of the greenhouse subject to flooding. Eventually I'll have decking over that part of the floor, and then it won't matter when it floods. But today's flooding prevented me from installing the concrete pier I'd wanted to build.
On a few occasions today I split some of the pieces of Ray and Nancy's Silver Maple. I'm not used to working with Silver Maple (it existed only as an ornamental in Virginia and cannot be found in the woods near our house), but I'm finding that when it doesn't have knots it is very easy to split (at least when still green). But Ray and Nancy's tree had grown out in the open and had many lateral branches, and these rendered many of the pieces nearly unsplittable (though not as unsplittable as, say, American Elm or tupelo).
Despite recent frosts, I'm still eating fresh tomatoes, though they're becoming increasingly marginal. Still, it's good to know that fresh tomato season can last three whole months without even the aid of a greenhouse. I think of seasons both in terms of average temperature as well as day length. Some years ago I came up with the idea of "solar winter" to refer to the quarter of the year having the least amount of sunlight (it starts on or about November 7th and ends on or about February 7th). Tomato season, then, seems to correspond precisely with solar autumn, the quarter of the year preceding solar winter (August 7th-November 7th).
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