The first frost came and took the pumpkin vines. They had not been well, anyhow, and struggled all spring and summer to yield a single grapefruit-sized pumpkin. I hadn’t even intended to harvest it when I did the week before; I simply went to pick it up and have a look, but it came quickly off the powdery mildewed vine. The fruit itself is healthy, I think, if small, and Judith has promised an early-November pie. So I conceded the pumpkins to the two-night frost, pulling out the crisp, dead vines (which took up our northeastern-most bed at the back of the yard) and planted gardenway cover crop to fix the soil’s nitrogen. Three other backyard beds have the same cover crop (three of the western beds, four in total), while our fall greens (chard, collards, cauliflower, merlot and butter lettuce) are taking up an eastern bed, as well as the southeastern bed planted recently with shallots. Half of a lone northwestern bed is still producing kale and may yet yield leeks, radishes, and spinach, though I am not optimistic about the any of the latter.