This week’s weather is the reason we live on the Vineyard and why October is a favorite month.

I never mind the rain. It’s a huge relief to not haul hoses around. I do feel sorry for Monday through Friday workers as rainy Saturdays are starting to be the norm.

I read in the old The Gardener’s Bed-Book that “it is an abhorrence for the earth to freeze dry.” There seems to be no danger this year.

Tuesday morning was downright chilly. I made a tiny fire in the woodstove, using paper trash and just a few logs. It was wonderfully cozy.

I have a plan for the vegetable beds. None of this has actually happened as yet. One can only hope.

In the beds where onions and potatoes grew this past summer, I did manage to put down some lime and ProGro with the help of my wonderful summer worker, Maria Hurwitz. I puchased 50 pounds of buckwheat and planted it thickly. It came up in a nanosecond and was blooming in a matter of weeks.

Then the rains and winds came and pretty much flattened it. Here’s where the hopeful plan comes. I’m going to wad the flattened buckwheat and cover it with some mulch hay. Then, in mid-November or so, I’ll seed some winter rye right on top of the hay.

I experimented with this method on a few areas last fall and in the spring, simply turned flakes of hay over with

the rye on top — now the bottom. In the spring, I planted little tomato seedlings right into the upside-down hay. No tools were used and many, dare I say, containers of tomato sauce resulted.

This is a variation of the Ruth Stout “no-work” method. Her books are out of print but if you see any at a yard sale — i.e., How To Have a Green Thumb Without an Aching Back — grab them.

I better get a move on. There is transplanting to be done before the cold sets in. I like to bring geraniums into the greenhouse to begin acclimating before their move indoors.

The greenhouse is a proverbial train wreck. It’s a handy spot for yard clean up but, sadly, with no organizational aforethought.

As far as the flower beds go, I feel like a broken record. Deadheading is the key word here. It’s always fun to leave a few seedheads to allow for reseeding but honestly they are unattractive if you are going for pleasing visuals.

Creating the seedhead, hence reproducing, is the job of the flower. Once that job is done the need for more blooms becomes unnecessary. Cutting the seedhead makes the plant “think” it needs to put out more blossoms in order to complete its job.

Speaking of completing the job, I’m all in to allow Joe Biden to complete the good job he has done so far with very little credit from the media.

They’re too busy endlessly pointing out the obvious truth of his age. They’ve done such a good job of pushing the point that it’s a top polling question.

Funny how 80 is too old for Joe but Mick Jagger, who is the same age, just put out a new album. Bob Dylan, who is 82, did 100 live shows last year. My personal favorite is Jimmy Carter, who just turned 99, singlehandedly bringing the number of guinea worm cases down from three and a half million to six worldwide. This was after his one-term presidency. Life can go on after losing an election, Donald!