Despite the continuing heat wave that is making September feel more like July, the garden has noticed the shorter days and the hot weather crops are slowing down. Fortunately, fall crops are stepping in. While still baby sized and immature, fall veggies are lying in wait for their chance to take over once summer has ceded control of the garden.

Filling buckets with excess tomatoes for canning.

Some summer veggies are on their last legs. Tomato vines are dying back, even as the fruit is still ripening, but we're hoping for another month of tomatoes.

Peppers and eggplants are thriving in this late summer heat, and may stick around until the frost.

Summer squash are nearly done. They continue putting out bright orange blossoms right up until the end.

Meanwhile, the fall crops are moving in and starting to come up.

Butternut squash, still tiny and attached to its flower.

It's hard to imagine when the temperature is hovering around 30 and the humidity is thick in the air, but fall is just around the corner. Are you ready?

This is a dish I made for Thanksgiving dinner last year. It captures the general harvest abundance theme of the holiday as it's sort of a smorgasboard of late summer/early fall veggies all thrown together into one delicious dish. It can be made in advance and reheated for dinner but it also works well alongside busy Turkey Day preparations since it's a pretty simple process: toss it all into the oven and puree when sufficiently roasted. For the purposes of this recipe I've listed specific ingredients and quantities, but really the spirit of the dish is to toss in whatever veggies look tasty. Last year we had more peppers available since the summer was less cool and rainy so I featured them heavily. However, a pepper-less soup with early fall's acorn squash turns out to be just as yummy.

Ingredients:

- 2 acorn squash
- 1 lb tomatoes (for this recipe I used 10 of the small tomatoes from this week's box)
- 3 small onions
- 1-2 garlic bulbs
- 3-4 large carrots
- a sprig of fresh rosemary
- olive oil
- salt to taste

Steps:

1. Prep veggies minimally and lay in an oiled roasting pan. For acorn squash, this means cutting in half and scooping out seeds. For carrots: chop off stems and slice in half. For onions: peel and slice in half. The tomatoes I used for this recipe are sufficiently small that I didn't bother with cutting out the core, but if you use larger tomatoes you may want to.

2. Pop the whole cloves out of the garlic bulb but don't peel them as you want them to bake inside
their own skin.

3. Drizzle veggies with olive oil and salt lightly. Bake at 375 F for 30 minutes. You may want to take the garlic out a bit early so it doesn't burn. Watch for the skins to start browning and remove from the oven immediately if they do.

4. After veggies come out of the oven throw all but the garlic in a food processor. You'll need to scoop the acorn squash flesh out with a spoon.

5. The garlic will be softened and might have a very squishy texture. Cut the cloves open and squeeze the garlic flesh into the food processor.

6. While the veggies are pureeing (this will likely take several minutes), finely chop 2-3 tsp of rosemary.

7. Move the veggie puree to a large pot and add broth or water to desired texture. For this recipe I added 3 cups of water and made about 7 ½ cups of soup in total. Heat on medium for 10 minutes and adjust salt to taste. If you use water instead of broth, don't forget to add salt to bring out the flavor in the soup.

8. Serve and garnish with whole rosemary. Other tasty finishing options include a dollop of sour cream or full fat yogurt, or 2 or 3 croutons made from buttered toast (ideally a thick, crusty bread) cut into cubes.

Garden in Transition

Recipe: Harvest Vegetable Soup

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