We had a frost last night. I went to bed to toss and turn and get up for seventy rechecks of weather.com’s hour to hour forecast for our zip code and at least twice as many pep talks from the Angels during which they said, patiently I might add, that the Red Shiso would be FINE.

They were right. The Red Shiso was fine. But there was crunchy white grass underneath the Red Shiso this morning and that is sort of a close call for a person with a vivid imagination. You can probably imagine it too, MY meltdown were the Red Shiso to melt down in a frost.

Sadly, the possibility of frost comes every night this time of year. The Angels have suggested that for tonight I run the sprinkler on the Red Shiso for an hour or so before covering it in the lightweight season extender cloth. Then they suggest I get up at 3 am to turn on the sprinkler to keep the crop wet through those early morning hours when it is the coldest and frost rolls through the farm, banging into gardens on its way downhill.

All these directions suggest an even closer call tonight.

I wonder when this life on the razor’s edge of frost will get to me and I will start the harvest, even if the Angels AND weather.com forecasts a stretch of balmy 50 degrees nights. These late season nights tend to be restless and not just for me. Jim doesn’t sleep much better than I do this time of year. The reason being? He doesn’t even have to imagine a Molly meltdown. He has seen one!

So why don’t I just go out there for everyone’s sake and chop, chop, chop? This is certainly the question I ask myself. But there is a good reason to lose sleep, visit weather.com more times than a budding meterologist, and keep the Angels on speaker phone.

Every extra day the Red Shiso gets of brilliant fall sunshine before it is harvested might make all the difference in terms of its color. Last year, I harvested the Red Shiso extremely early. I freaked in the face of frost warnings. It was August when I caved. We had a mild frost the night after I harvested the crop, probably the kind of frost I could have managed with the sprinkler and then, we did not have another frost until mid- October. It was unprecedented, to go this late without a frost. The August harvest proved to be too early for a really purple crop. Every day until the middle of October, I got to reflect on this, as I saw how much more time and sunshine the Red Shiso could have had to get more deeply pigmented.

Virtually the whole harvest dried with almost none of the purple leaves we use to make our tincture. The staff will attest to this. They will also offer sworn testimonials that it is absolutely NO FUN to pluck dried Shiso without the Red.

This week the staff will finish plucking the meager couple of purple leaves from bundle after bundle after bundle which has constituted the main activity associated with this past year’s harvest. I think they may break out the champagne to celebrate the last bundle’s composting. It’s been a long year without the thrill of brimming baskets of purple leaves.

I will be ready to celebrate too. Maybe out in the gardens with my sprinkler at 3 am. I will celebrate because even with this pale crop, we still managed to eek out our year’s Red Shiso tincture from what we had. And that was no small miracle. The amount of Red Shiso we have left before we will need to use this new crop is negligible, whereas sometimes we go well into the winter before using the new season’s leaves.

I have to smile. The Angels hold my learning curve with so much compassion AND foresight. After all, they had me plant enough to get sufficient tincture from a half baked crop!

THE NEXT MORNING
I stopped writing yesterday afternoon to haul out the season extender cloth and spread it on the Red Shiso.

I also went to Willy’s first soccer game. The sky was clear, the sun was bright, but the air was chilled. On the sidelines, folks were bundled in winter coats. The talk was about frost warnings. The local newspaper, affectionately known as the Valley Snooze, forecast 21 degrees for some places in our area. This caused quite a stir. 21 degrees is not a mild brush with frost. It’s a killing frost and no amount of season extender cloth is going to work in the face of that temperature. I tried to concentrate on the game at hand. Poorly, I might add.

Then I came home and let go. That seems to be the theme of my life right now. JUST LET GO. The Angels had said my preparations were enough. They knew what was to be better than the Valley Snooze. I had done all they had asked and needed to lay down my worries. No matter what happened, I needed to remember the Angels would have a plan. I needed to stop holding onto worry to bolster an illusionary sense of control. I needed to let it go.

I slept fine under a pile of blankets and so did Shiso. Despite the forecast of a deadly cold, fog rolled in after midnight and blanketed the Red Shiso and all the gardens in a lovely warm cover of fog.

The last few weeks, the Angels have asked me to drink a quart jar of water with Flow Free in it each day. What with kids going, fall coming, bees swarming, I have needed a lot of support to go with the flow. As I woke up this morning and saw with a rush of gratitude that in letting go, there had been other more capable hands picking up the burden of keeping the Red Shiso warm, I felt hopeful and at peace.

Somewhere down the road, maybe after quart six hundred and thirty seven of Flow Free water, I may actually get the hang of this letting go thing and in the meantime, I will be well hydrated!