The National Weather Service is predicting windy wet highs by this coming Tuesday 35 degrees lower than the highs of this weekend. That's mid 50s with freezing themperatures at night.

Plans for many will change, somewhat, for the weekend to accomodate last minute harvesting and other rituals associated with this yearly event, like bringing the delicate plants back indoors for the winter, or washing out the empty containers and storing them away.

So the Weather Service gives us three good nights for summer's end garden parties. There is, to be sure, plenty of reason for celebrating. For one, we commerate the passing of the season and we toast a lively good-bye to the warm days of this year's beautiful garden. Every year different, every year full of pleasure and surprise, we again say thank you and good-bye to all the little plants -- like this beautiful Coleus -- and good-bye too, to all those fascinating garden insects that will suddenly and drastically change next week.

For gardening, autumn is a great time for planting perennials. In fact, it's actually better than spring planting for many plants. Fall planting gives the root systems a jump start on growth so that by spring, everyone is ready to concentrate on showing off their interesting, delightful foliage.

If new to the area and planning for autumn color, this is a good time to study the yards and landscapes of neighbors. Even better, this is a great time to come visit the nursery with a concentration of autumn characteristics in show.

If looking for colors that remind us of the New World, Dry Creek offers these and more:

• Turkastan Maple (Acer turkestanicum) -- a small shrub with slender branches offers bright red leaves in the fall.
• Autumn Blaze Maple (Acer X Freemanii) -- this rapid growing pyramidal deciduous broadleaf tree grows to a height of 50 to 60 feet and is dazzling red in the fall.Ã?
• Dream Catcher Cherry (Prunus 'Dream Catcher') -- a beautiful, medium to fast growing upright deciduous tree offers year-round ornamental features, including a striking pink array of flowers in the spring, deep green leaves in summer, and a yellow-orange display in the fall.
• Clump River Birch (Betulaceae) -- a large, fast growing pyramidal deciduous shade tree with color ranging between chartreuse and golden-yellow depending upon the year.

Tomatoes are beautiful this year. Many are on the vine, ripening now. Our extended warm, sunny weather has been good to them. The plants themselves are looking autumn like, yellowing leaves showing off the reddening nightshade berries.

People used to be afraid of tomatoes, thinking them to be an equivalent to Sleeping Beauty's poisoned apple. Some people claim real life allergies related to eating not only the tomato, but food of all the nightshades. Still others define the tomato as a superfood.

It does seem, for this table anyway, that tomatoes are an essential human food, if not for its super nutritional qualities, then because of its flavor. From a Beefsteak on a (veggie) burger to fresh mozzarella and basil, to sweet and savory pies, the tomato has definitely become a companion plant.

This year's weather shows, too, how gardeners use tomatoes as signal plants for defining the season. "The tomatoes are slow this year." "The tomatoes are waiting for the warmer days to come." "The tomatoes are reacting to a month of steady warmth and sun."

These tomatoes joyfully offered themselves to became sauce for a thin crusted pizza.

In Defense of Food

Food Defense. It's so prevalent that the dynamic between the defense of food and the threat of sabotage could be claimed as a major force motivating the emergence and movement of human history. The use of poisons to sabotage food for political reasons dates back several thousand years in some cultures. In the west, not long after the discovery and empirical analysis of what makes a poison a poison, defense against the misuse of poisons found its place as a cultural phenomenon. The big cases like political assassinations even generated entire cottage industries with very dangerous career options. Even in our own time, the events of September 11, 2001, brought the philosophy of food defense back into discussion as an intensified concern. By now, thousands of scenarios have been imagined and scrutinized for viability. Responsive defense objectives have been planned and developed. In a world such as the one we live in, agricultural terrorism becomes just one on a long list of many possibilities.

And then there's industrial manipulation, a whole other type of food defense which is why we have so called 'health food' stores and buying co-ops protecting us from all sorts of bio-tampering ventures, like genetic engineering, pesticide spraying and chemical fertilization.

And then even closer to home, in a world not as crazy as our national and global scenes, in a world defined perhaps by our own gardens and pantries, there are other types of food defense scenarios we face. Based on factors that emerge for less insane reasons, to be sure, in our everyday reality, we constantly protect crops and other food sources from a variety of threats, like contamination by rodent infestation or fruit and seed pilfering by birds. Even shooing flies off the freshly cut cucumbers, tomatoes, peppers and avocados is a form of food defense. From deer fences to cattle guards, even canning is a way of defending food from threats, as in the many microorganisms that would otherwise make the food unfit for intended consumption.

Defensible Vegetable Platter

• 2 freshly picked tomatoes
• small ripe avocados (home grown from California)
• several freshly picked cherry tomatoes
• several freshly picked sweet banana peppers, seeded and sliced
• 1 large freshly picked cucumber, peeled and sliced
• any other freshly picked, raw eating vegetables prepared how you like them

The platter will be absolutely defenseless against one or two of your favorite vegetable dipping sauces.

These home grown avocados were a gift from gardening friends from northeastern California. Here close to the border, reciprocal food sharing across state lines encounters an obstacle, that of the agricultural inspection stations Nevada gardeners encounter at nearly every entrance into California. But gifts and trades move east to west in other ways, especially during canning season.

There is something fascinating about food sharing amongst the humans. Of course, it's an ancient practice, described in detail by the cultural anthropologists. Humans share food in times of plenty, but also in times of extreme scarcity. The trick seems to be the great art of social cohesiveness and commutual respect, even across deep cultural divides. There are descriptions and studies, too, of the many ways in which cultural stability is achieved as well as lost. Much about cultural preservation, of course, centers around agriculture.

But food sharing is a good sign when it comes to prospects of peace amongst the factions. Grapes for avocados Tomatoes for honey. Philosophers bring up questions of balance and reciprocity. It becomes an ethical debate about the dynamics of material exchange and the age old question of payment. Who does the work? Who gets paid? Who gets fed? What is fair?

Guacamole anyone?

• At least two large ripe avocados or several small ones, remove seeds and scoop out flesh.
• One small Walawala onion
• 1/4 sweet red onion
• 1 freshly picked jalapeno pepper, seeded and finely chopped
• 1 tablespoon of fresh lime juice
• 2 tablespoons to 1/4 cup freshly picked cilantro, finely chopped
• a little salt to taste
• black pepper to taste
• outer flesh of 1 freshly picked medium sized tomato, cut in small chunks
• 1 freshly picked cucumber, peeled and sliced into rounds

Mix together everything but the cucumber. Serve immediately with chips. Serve the cucumber rounds as an alternative to chips.

It is perhaps unknown to many people that today -- 09 - 09 - 09 -- is World Day of Interconnectedness.

As in the connection one feels toward certain sublime skinnydipping spots, the sense of oneness we feel toward a place, toward something, anything, anyone, translates into the actions we decide upon which actually define our lives. The goal is to be able to say "Yes" to life, to all that life is and all that temporality brings to the embodied self. Of course, this intricate connection inevitably and inexplicably includes days of ice and wind and even the occasional all-consuming wildfire. In the end, even when there might be reason to become angry at life, affirmation always feels better, more healthy, more fulfilling, more wise, less bitter, less aggressive, less grouchy. This sense of interconnectedness also makes good ecological and social sense. It is a relational philosophy that engenders respect and through respect, a stance of protection and care.

So we celebrate because 090909 is as good a day as any to acknowledge and thereby promote the interconnectedness we enjoy or endure and depend upon every split second of our lifelong journey towards death.

If that doesn't work, here's another reason to take a day off in the middle of the week: The schools are back in session, most of the tourists have gone home and the weather is perfect. What better day than today for posting that "Gone Gardening" sign on the door...

With the lingering perfect weather this summer, you might want to fertilize annuals one more time. Who knows, we might be in for warm days lasting well into October.

Hopefully, too, the warm days and mild nights will continue long enough to allow many green tomatoes on the vine to ripen. For many, the tomato plants were slow to produce, but are now loaded with still green tomatoes.

Other nightshades are doing well this summer, too. Several varieties of eggplant are showing beautiful, deep green foliage with little insect damage. And the plants are sagging, full of eatable fruit. As was planned, there are five different types of eggplant ready and waiting for the roasting flames.

Delightful also this year are the cucumber vines. They've been very productive, although now winding down. This season the long vines were prodded to wind their way through the tomato support poles. That way, here and there the hanging cucumbers added variety to the tomato and eggplant shapes. The cucumbers have been sweet, juicy and delicious this season.

Of course, don't forget that your perennials might need some fertilizer in the weeks to come.

Who said you can't grow excellent cabbage in Reno? This beauty was harvested for the Labor Day holiday weekend. It was grown without chemical pesticides or chemical fertilizers in a raised bed in Reno's famed 'Banana Belt' with morning and early to mid-afternoon sun. The soil was prepared with last year's potting soil, a really good crop of humus from the family compost bin, a good dose of organic chicken manure, and a once a month dry or tea feeding with a high grade, organic vegetable fertilizer.

The cool, wet spring seems to have been very conducive to growing cool weather vegetables this season. This box produced beautiful patchs of Collard Greens, Purple Kale, Leeks and Walawala Onions.

Plants that did not do well in this particular box this season were tomatoes, eggplant, pumpkin, and beans. In past years those plant types have done very well in this space.

Autumn plans are already set for greatly improving the soil of this box for next year's use.

Dishes prepared from this single cabbage plant:

• Magic Vegetable Soup Stock
• Cabbage Leaves Stuffed with Turkey, Fresh Herbs and Organic Quinoa
• Bob's Spicy Coleslaw (Mayonnaise free)
• Steamed Cabbage with Fennel Seeds and Butter

As far as insects are concerned, this cabbage was relatively free from pest damage. There were a few holes in the outeer leaves, but not many. Also found were two small happy and healthy slugs tucked down in the outer leaves of the head. The slugs were served with a fresh lemon side, but there were no takers. Finally, we found a small, disoriented earthworm inside the head. The small earthworm was celebrated and verbally thanked for helping produce such fine humus, then promptly returned to its compost home with a cabbage leaf to eat and lounge on.