Good morning! Come on in and grab a coffee or a tea, and sit.

I thought about doing a “Lessons I learned from my garden this year,” but can’t, not yet, not while my garden is still kicking, and certainly not while I’m still harvesting and eating from it on a daily basis. In fact, the plants appear to be loving the weather right now – 70-degrees days, near 50-degrees nights. They are absolutely thriving and producing.

I spent about 3 hours last Saturday cleaning up my garden – pulling out the non-productive (yet not dead) plants as well as removing and pruning all the yellowing and dead plants and chucking that into my to-be-composted trash bin, which is a wait station for my currently full compost bins. I also began the rooting process for 6 strawberry plants which I hope to have it planted in one of my Greenstalk towers so I can have a strawberry tower next year.

It was hard work but I felt better afterwards as I looked around the garden – once again lush green and organized (somewhat).

I’m glad the current temperatures will continue for the next 10 days. I’m not ready to shut down my garden yet (am I ever?) but I will have to be ready because even if the first frost doesn’t come and kill my plants, the Persephone period will come, which will cause all growth to seize.

What is the Persephone period, you ask?

It’s when daylight falls below 10 hours. For my neck of the woods, that’s November 11. It’s different according to your location. This means, no matter what, my garden will end in less than 1 month.

If we were having coffee, I would tell you I have wheels again. After almost a month, I finally got my car back. The repair is technically done but I still have to get the protective film put on again, which will be in about a month.

The repair undid my mistake though I can’t say I will ever look at my car the same ever again. It doesn’t feel like the same car, despite the new door, new mirror, and new fender, it feels different, like a stranger’s car, not the car I’ve had for the last 4 years.

I drove to work for the first time in almost a month this week and found myself completely frozen at the wheel when I saw a delivery truck exiting the alley I was about to enter. Flashbacks immediately filled my mind as I kept muttering, “come on, go already.”

This alley was where I scraped the wheel of my car hard against the sidewalk that same week I had my accident. Now, with the truck, it felt like my nightmare was happening all over again. There was no way I could squeeze into the alley and if I had, I would’ve risked damaging the driver side of my car and I could’ve been hurt.

Thankfully, the truck made the right turn while I stopped at the mouth of alley, careless of the cars honking behind me and the voice in my head telling me, “just go, you wimp.”

Other than a second “frozen at the wheel” moment when I encountered an UPS truck turning in my direction as I was pulling out of the parking garage that afternoon (what’s up with all the trucks turning in my direction?), it felt great to get behind the wheel again despite the car feeling like a stranger to me, not like the friend I used to feel for it. Perhaps, in time, I will feel like that again.

#weekendcoffeeshare is hosted by Natalie of Natalie the Explorer. I appreciate you stopping by and hope to chat again same time next week.