Damn, our city is efficient.  I spread tree clippings and mulch on what will become an expansion of the berry patch.  This is a good 20' from the street and the curbside guys came into my yard and picked this up as as if it had been left out for them to take.  they were probably cussing they idiots who couldn't make a better pile than that and put it right up against those thorny bushes. Funny how the city is always reminding us not to put more in the land fill than we need to yet they come tromping into my yard to steal my mulch to fill the land fill with. Oh well, one has to admire their effort. 

What a glorious day spent in my garden.  I worked listening to Barbara Kingsolver’s Animal, Mineral, Miracle - definitely a book to garden to.  Hmmm?  There should be a list of books to garden to. Beautiful fall weather.  Hot by the standards of most the country.  But the kind of hot that we in Texas call almost cool, where sweat in your eyes is not a given but something you actually have to work for.  I planted lettuce, Swiss chard, carrots and radishes - the first two from sets the second two from seed.  We will have Swiss chard through the winter.  Sometimes the lettuce will make it through the winter too.

I also pruned “the Monster.” The monster is an illyagnus that my wife dubbed the monster because she thinks that it is ugly and year by year it is consuming a large part of the yard.   True enough, the illiagnus bush has no sexy waistline our colorful plumage.  It’s appeal is more subtle.  But rest assured that it does have its own power of seduction.   For a perverted plantaphile like myself, I am easily seduce year round by this obese lug of a bird habitat.  But only the most frigid observer could resist the temptations of this fall bloomers bouquet.

I heaped clippings and mulch on to next February’s expansion of the black berry patch.

My friend Andrew stopped by and talked about organizing the university to his liking while I pulled Bermuda grass from the oregano patch.

Finally, tired in the disappointment of the darkness that settles too quickly on such Sundays, I logged on to SeedSavers.org and became a member with dreams of heirloom soups and salads.

I love Sundays in my garden.  And I cannot help but think that church, like cynicism, is mainly for those who do not garden.