Mowing mowing mowing made a nice smooth yard of many greens and textures - the "lawns" comprising alfalfa, salsify, white and yellow sweet clovers, white clover (not enough!), wild asters, dandelion, bull thistle, sow thistle, and some actual grasses. The feel of the place really is quite sweet when the greens are all tall and flourishing. It's like standing in a fallow field: one keeps alert for foxes. Alas, however, it is yard, and must at intervals be cut. So yesterday all day I dragged the machine around the place and carted heaps of moist green clippings to the compost piles. Nothing burns hot as alfalfa there. And then afterward set the oscillating sprinkler going to recover everything in its slow rhythms.

I wish I had the physical juice to make a garden. But that ain't happening anymore. So I have some big planters filled with squash and tomato and herb plants, comfrey and yarrow here and there. We had an early frost night before last and probably last night, killing back the vegetables' outermost leaves. It's hard to get a full growing season at this altitude. I must do more research to find seeds for species bred to Siberia. Well, High Country Gardens for one is a good catalog for that. I must make room to start things indoors - invent a hanging nursery for the east windows. Then maybe one year finally we may get to taste a homegrown tomato.