The morning of the first frost
I knew it was coming. The forecast had been hinting at it all week, and last night the sky cleared completely, which is always the giveaway. By six this morning every leaf in the garden was edged in white.
The barometer had been high and steady for three days, and the evening reading was 1027 with no wind at all. Clear, still and high is the classic recipe: the ground loses its heat straight up into the sky with nothing to hold it in. The thermometer by the shed read 29°F at dawn.
The basil, of course, is finished. It always goes first, turning black and limp within an hour of the sun touching it. The last of the tomatoes I'd left on the vine are soft now; I'll pull the plants this weekend and compost them. The nasturtiums along the fence, which were still flowering bravely yesterday, have collapsed into a translucent green heap.
The kale, on the other hand, looks wonderful. Frost converts some of its starches to sugar, and the leaves I picked at noon were noticeably sweeter. The chard is sulking but alive. The garlic I planted two weeks ago doesn't care at all.
Frost is the garden's way of editing. It decides what the next chapter is about.
I took a few minutes before breakfast just to look. Frost on a cabbage leaf grows in tiny feathery crystals along the veins, and the seed heads I had left standing for the finches were each wearing a small white crown. A wren was working through the bean poles, looking for whatever insects had been caught out.
For my own records, this is about a week later than last year's first frost and close to the average in my notebooks. The first frost dates I have written down over eight years range across about three weeks, which is wider than I would have guessed.
Tomorrow I'll mulch the beds with the leaves that are finally coming down from the maple, and start thinking about what to order for spring.