A swift demise

I have been meaning to get back to my plot with my camera after stopping by Tuesday afternoon.  What a difference a killing frost makes.  Most of the annual plants in my plot are showing the effects of rigor mortis.  I thought the wind had blown a dead tree branch into the plot; upon closer inspection I discovered it was my eggplant, which had been bearing enough to feed a family the week before, now brown and lying horizontally across my still-proliferating strawberry plants.  There was a stark contrast between the dead and the living.  My lettuce, though stunted, remained crispy and supermarket green while my green peppers, zinnias, and others appeared to have been sprayed with the same can of greenish-brown paint.  All of the color had been leached out of my zinnias.  A graveyard of skeletons,  just in time for Halloween.

I suppose that leaving the camera at home forces me to write more descriptively.  In any case, I just wanted to acknowledge these passings before they are really old news.  There will be more to write about over the next few days: a work day has been added tomorrow and the stones for the John Carroll memorial will be arriving soon.