My garden looks pretty sad right now. Most of the tomato plants have been picked clean and the plants are almost dead. The corn stalks are brown and the few ears still clinging to them are way beyond edible. All that’s left of the pumpkin patch are dried leaves and vines, and the now-empty gourd trellises are lying on the ground.

There are still a few carrots and beets to pull, and potatoes to dig. A hard frost has not yet hit. Then the huge job of cleaning up the dead and dying debris, tucking away the markers, and tilling and fertilizing for next year begins.

That sad-looking garden now is only normal. It’s almost the middle of October. But it was spectacular throughout the growing season.

My pantry and freezer can attest to that.

Rows and rows of canned tomatoes, tomato juice, tomato mixture, salsa, sauce, corn, beets, pickles and green and yellow beans line not only the pantry, but also the jelly cabinet and shelves wherever I can find them. The freezer holds more beans, parsley, peppers and vegetable mixtures.

Bunches of dill and basil hang from hooks in an unheated hall, along with buckets of potatoes covered and stored in that hall’s closet. Winter squash are sleeping in an upstairs unheated bedroom.

Pumpkins decorate the mailbox, front granite steps, and wherever else they look just right.

It’s been a fabulous growing season, made all the more so because of last year’s disastrous garden..

My canner has been working during almost every spare minute I am not at my job. For the first time in the many decades that I’ve been “putting food by,” I’m running out of mason jars and returning to the bail type.

I believe I will set a canning record this year when the last tomato is canned or made into sauce.

It’s a wonderful feeling, one that makes me feel secure as well as ready for the long winter to come.

The season’s canning began on a less than happy note. I dropped the cover and smashed the pressure gauge during the very first week. My immediate thought was where am I going to get $120 to buy a new one?

When I bought my canner in the 1960s, it cost the equivalent of what I earned every week, about $50. I never dreamed I’d be able to find a replacement gauge, particularly in time to put the canner to work this season.

But the garden gods were with me in the form of the Farmington Farmers Union, so for a mere $20, I was on my way to setting my personal canning record, and oh so grateful.

Harvesting the produce has been a great joy. Unfortunately, I’m not the only creature in my household to enjoy the abundance. No raccoons, deer or groundhogs attacking the garden this year, just our own pets. When I wasn’t looking, our golden, Dusty, helped himself to corn as soon as it was ready. He also waited patiently for tomatoes to ripen, then he’d gently pick one.

My geese, who are lovable but very cagey critters, discovered each spot in the garden where tender young lettuce leaves or curly parsley were growing. They didn’t bother much of anything else.

As I clean up the garden patch, and all the small, separate patches in which I have grown far too many vegetables, I think ahead to next year.

Yes, my two new beds were perfect for growing fresh onions and carrots, and lettuce and spinach. In fact they were so good, that I’ve already convinced my husband to build me another railroad tie raised bed for planting my herbs — basil, parsley and dill.

The potatoes were planted under straw rather than hills, and produced as well as they ever have.

Trellises worked well on the gourds, so maybe next year I’ll trellis the cucumbers, too. That well-fertilized pumpkin patch that produced dozens of deep-ribbed, deep-orange Howdens might be a great idea for my winter squashes. And surely, I will continue to plant the extra tomato plants I inevitably buy, in a dozen or so five-gallon pails in the front yard.

Each year I say my garden must get a bit smaller, and each year, it somehow grows larger.

But that’s OK.

The joy — and exercise — that I get from it more than compensates for not always having the time or energy to care for all those growing things as I should. Although the gardens weren’t weed-free, they produced tons of food, much eaten as it was ready, more canned or frozen for the future, and a substantial amount for family, friends and the local food cupboard.

Only a few more weeds before the seed catalogs start coming in. And I can begin to dream of next year — what will be new, what will be done again, and what critters and weather will attack my tender plants.

Gardening is a joy. It’s in my blood. And it’s something I must do as the snow starts to melt and the days grow longer.

Fresh vegetables, right from my garden. Food can’t get any more local than this.

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