It came in on the second of November, a hard one, twenty eight degrees on the thermometer on the north side of the house. I went out at seven with coffee and found the whole back bed gone glassy and gray, the squash leaves collapsed like wet paper, the basil black at the tips. By nine it had all turned to mush. Frost does not negotiate.
What it took
The tomatoes, obviously. Eleven green ones were still on the vine and I had been telling myself for three weeks that they would ripen. They would not have. They are in a paper bag on top of the refrigerator now with a banana for company, which works about half the time and is still better than the compost pile. It took the basil, the last of the beans, and two volunteer sunflowers that came up in the gravel and that I had grown attached to.
What it left
Everything that actually wants to be here. The kale looks better than it has all year, which is the annoying thing about kale: it needs a frost before it tastes like anything, and then it tastes like something you would pay for. The leeks did not notice. The carrots, which went in late in July on a whim, turned sweet overnight, because cold makes them trade starch for sugar as a kind of antifreeze. I pulled six and they were the best carrots I have grown.
The rosemary by the porch steps is fine and will be fine. The thyme is fine. The parsley is arguably improved.
What I am doing differently next year
Three things. Half as many tomatoes and twice as many brassicas, because I keep planting for the garden I want in July instead of the one I can actually eat in November. Carrots on purpose rather than by accident. And a low tunnel over the long bed, built out of pvc and row cover, which every gardener in this county has told me to do for two years and which I will finally believe in when I taste spinach in January.
The other thing the frost left is the light. With the leaves down, the kitchen window gets an hour of direct sun in the afternoon that it has not had since May. I have been eating lunch in it like a cat.
