At 11:00 PM I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to check the weather report to see if it would freeze during the night. So I put down my book in the middle of a riveting piece about fourteenth-century book production and sales at French universities (great bedtime reading), and dialed the National Weather Service. As the recorded voice droned on, I reminded myself that it had been 33 degrees here on the past two mornings.

And the recorded voice told me in no uncertain terms that we were done flirting with a frost; it was going to happen.

So I leaped to it. We have a lot of gardening in pots on the deck, and with Rose away it was up to me to do frost triage. The growing season at our house is too short to grow pumpkins, so the title of this post is somewhat facetious, but there was a lot of botanical diversity on the line. I threw down a dropcloth on the floor inside and began hauling in pots and picking green tomatoes. I’d had a farewell garden salad the night before, using up almost all of the stuff I liked best.

Probably the last garden salad greens of 2015 coming in for a celebrated demise

The damned voles had cut off our peas in their prime, and a wandering moose had selectively taken all of Rose’s favorite greens (thus proving that she has better taste than me). So there were things that were ready to be sacrificed. Most were not in pots anyway, but there was no need to cover anything, either.

The tomatoes and chile peppers had just begun to ripen. But their flavor just isn’t the best here, so I saved a lot of “meh” stuff. The stars of this year’s show, however, were the geraniums (“geronimos”), which we’d inherited from good friends who’ve moved south. The most important things, the house plants, Rose had moved inside before she left. It was a good call. They missed the late August monsoon and seem to be happily back inside surviving my mediocre watering skills.

And so the house is excessively filled with plants, but I am sure I will be able to kill a few off before the resident botanist returns.

Formerly outdoor plants come inside to escape the frost