End Of the Season

As I’ve mentioned at least a few times before, I used to live in South Texas. In fact, I lived there for over twenty years. One of the particular things I don’t miss about South Texas is the lack of any real seasons. We used to say that we had Slightly Hot, Slightly More Hot, and OMG Turn Up the Air Conditioning.

Now I live in Colorado where, needless to say, we have four very rigidly defined seasons. Gardening is bracketed by the last frost in April or May and the first frost in September or October. This means farmers markets are also pretty rigidly seasonal. You get greens and peas early on, tomatoes and sweet corn in July, and root veggies from September until the end.

The Boulder Farmers Market is one of the biggest in the state and even has a national rep. I love it, although I always end up buying stuff that I then have to figure out how to use, like lion’s head mushrooms (good luck with that). Unlike some of the smaller farmers markets, Boulder runs until the middle of November, which means the farmers have to deal with frost and early snows—one year we had our first blizzard before Halloween, which meant the market featured a whole lot of bargain basement produce the following Saturday. The hubs and I went to one of the final Saturdays a couple of weeks ago and a good thing we did—last Saturday featured a full day of sleet.

The hubs had a new camera, and he spent much of his time photographing veggies. This may seem like an odd thing to do, but veggies can be beautiful, particularly at the end of the season when the multicolor root veggies are prevalent. Moreover, the folks at the farmers market know to pile their produce in wonderful profusion, so that you can hardly resist taking a few carrots home with you. Anyway, here are some shots from the veggie cam.

Frankly, I hate beets. But at the same time I freely admit that they look great, particularly the multicolor minis like these.

I kinda think this is radiccio but I'm not entirely sure. It just looked very pretty sitting there in its basket.

It's late in the year for peppers, but the farmers still have quite a few. One of the stands had them tumbled out on a table, cornucopia style.

Ah, carrots. I actually bought some of these, although I have yet to do anything with them.

Pie pumpkins, but they also work for decoration. And very handsome specimens they are, too.

The farmers markets are done now until next April, and I'm very sad about it. This means I'll be stuck with Krogers and Safeway and Whole Foods with their imported produce and high prices. But once April rolls around we'll be back. With camera, I'm guessing.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all!