There are still many warm days to come, but low-lying gardens will see frost tonight – or tomorrow…or very soon, anyway. Time to decorate the place with plastic and ratty old sheets. Each year comes the vow to just say goodbye to bushels of basil, loaded ropes of cherry tomatoes and clusters of fat, fragrant raspberries… Each year comes a month of hideous tarps , protecting the last precious sweetness of summer for us and for our friends.

Of course, frost isn’t the only enemy. Bill has spent the last two weekends putting up black plastic deer fence. We’ve used repellants for years, switching between products so they don’t get used to anything, and this has kept most of our shrubbery more or less uneaten. But I’m saying “we” unjustly – Bill is the one who spends his autumn hours toting the sprayer around, and he has finally had it with the endless application of expensive, unpleasant liquids. The fence will be worth it, he figures, though how we will deal with a gated driveway remains to be determined. It’s blacktop right to the road, so a cow-catcher is out.