C'mon, garden! You can do it!

My last attempt at replanting the garden having been largely washed away, I took advantage of today's beautiful weather* to do a little more fall planting.

I wasn't starting from zero. There's still a monstrous amount of basil in the garden, plus a tiny (and I do mean tiny) smattering of eggplant, peppers, lima beans, carrots, tomatillos, and cilantro. A couple of watermelons are still lumbering onward. Also, there were a few survivors from the washout: four seedlings of garden huckleberry, three little stringbean plants, a few sweet potato seedlings, and that one baby tomato plant.

Here's what I planted today:
• a patch of lettuce
• 1 row of beets
• 1 row of cabbage
• 1 row of carrots
• 1 row of mustard greens
• 1 row of spinach
• 2 rows of radishes

I worked in the garden for an hour before dinner and then was suddenly famished. The s.o. was hungry too, and we nearly decided to go out for dinner. But then I improvised some pasta sauce, using a half-pound of Georgia sausage and a jar of my own canned tomatoes. I walked out to the garden to grab a handful of basil, and suddenly I spotted a little gift from the land: a perfect cueball-sized puffball mushroom. Into the sauce it went.

That kind of thing gives me so much pleasure. I hope the garden gets back on its feet soon.

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* I feel a little guilty saying that. Some tornadoes spun off of Katrina and whipped through Georgia last night, but they didn't quite reach us. I could see and hear them to our west--lots of eerie thudding and crackling. And today when I woke up, the strangest thing: I could smell the ocean. I'm not kidding.