fall is creeping up on us in eugene

i went out to the garden this morning to check on the tomatoes. this is a daily routine because even though we've encircled our minature garden with deer fencing, the deer (or should i say, venison?) relentlessly rip through it, go under it, tear it from the posts, and happily trample through the garden and eat our tomato plants. every single night. we do fix the fence occasionally, when we have time (well, i should clarify here so that i don't hear about it later, that my Loving Boyfriend, dear that he is, is the one that goes out and fixes it). but it's kind of a big job so we've accepted now that we're just going to lose most of the garden to fatten up the deer in the neighborhood. and yes, we have a fence all the way around the property. and yes, we have dogs - big dogs. but we still have deer. and it is illegal to make deer into venison inside the city limits. not that i would shoot them by any means, as i'm not much of a hunter. but i have no doubts they would taste good because they're the healthiest, biggest deer i've ever seen and they've been fattened up on all of my organic vegetables all summer long.

in fact, this is the only tomato we have that has 1) become red, and 2) survived long enough to become red. it's a striped roman. and it must be one hell of a tough tomato or taste really bad...otherwise i'm sure the deer would have eaten it by now.

the other thing i noticed this morning was that we've now had our first frost:

i guess its time to begin to let summer go and start dreaming of pumpkins and apple pies and nights of sipping mexican hot chocolate...