This week has been spent harvesting the vegetable plants, grape vines and fruit trees. We made jelly with ten and a half pounds of white concord grapes which yielded thirteen 12 ounce jars of jelly. This year we added calcium water to the pectin which allowed us to cut the sugar almost in half.

The jelly making inspired me to harvest some little peaches from a tree that's been trying really hard to produce a nice crop this year. The tree was loaded with small peaches just beginning to ripen up. So the first night the valley was threatened with a killing frost, I picked about 25 pounds of peaches, brought them in and am letting them ripen indoors. The taste of the peaches isn't that good, but the tree put out such an effort that it seems the least we can do is make some peach jelly. I'll add a little peach nectar to the juice for a flavor boost.

The tomato crop was not nearly as large as recent years past. Not nearly. Usually the day before the frost we bring in enough green tomatoes to line all the window sills in the house several layers thick. This year we'll be lucky to fill two sills with a single layer.

We also brought in all the house plants that live out of doors in the summer, but must come back in to escape the winter cold.

We then made baba ganoush with several small eggplant, baked some pita bread, then went to see the Nevada Opera's production of Carmen. It was an excellent show.

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.