"Summer is over and gone," they sang. "Over and gone, over and gone. Summer is dying, dying."

Summer is officially gone. With it goes gardening season, the time of growing green things. The temperature is dropping everyday and I felt frozen precipitation on my face over the weekend. And so my first season as a home gardener has come to an end.

The potato crop was pathetic, my carrots were quite entertaining and I had a good tomato crop for my first year. In fact, my tomato plants were still blossoming last week! We will probably have frost tonight, but there are a number of green tomatoes left on the plants that I will try to collect tomorrow if they survive. I've successfully detached myself from the fate of the tomato plants, and even the oregano plant we bought at the farmer's market that is still gripping life with its last few leaves. But the lettuce that reseeded itself...I'm really worrying about.

Tonight I took an old sheet and tucked it over and around the 1" lettuce plants that have made a thick carpet across one of my beds. From what I've read, this will probably protect it from being ruined by the frost. I'm hoping to save it until I have time to transplant it into pots this weekend.

Why so much concern for things that I didn't even plant? Good question. All season, the lettuce has been my pet project. I was devastated when I discovered rabbits were chomping plants off at the stems. I was the proud parent, dragging zip lock bags of salad to coworkers and potlucks. And now I am nurturing the unplanned offspring of my plants which have long since moved on to the compost pile. I do not understand it, but I really love my lettuce plants.

Speaking of compost piles, my dad bought me a pitchfork for my birthday. I am freaking excited about this. Last week I turned the entire pile using a shovel. It was not fun. Although, I am happy to report that there is quite a lot of brown, crumbly material at the bottom of the pile(as well as some horrible ammonia-smelling parts, thanks to a miscalculated addition of lawn fertilizer. oops.)

Winter is coming on and now I will have time for more indoor projects. I am excited to finally use the sewing machine I received as a Christmas present and get back into reading. But I miss my garden already. Which is why I am planning to maintain indoor lettuce and cherry tomatoes and an active compost heap throughout an Iowa winter. Wish me luck.

My blog is the first result in a search for "my teacher darling"

Why would you want to search for "my teacher darling" you ask? Well, I don't know for sure, but someone in Turkey does. That's right, Turkey!

StatCounter: one of the many items on my top ten fascinating things list that I would not know about if it were not for my amazing partner in crime, Chris. He somehow set my account up(I've tried to set it up with a project at work. 6 weeks later and it still isn't registering views) and now whenever someone looks at my blog, I get to stalk them! Sort of. I don't actually know who they are. But i can see how they found me, where they are from, how often they're coming back, etc.

Here's the breakdown of where you all are:

	65	Iowa	United States
	62	New York	United States
	62	Illinois	United States
	32	Washington	United States
	20	-	-	-
	16	California	United States
	13	Missouri	United States
	12	Ohio	United States
	10	Florida	United States
	7	Kentucky	United States
	6	Maryland	United States
	4	Wisconsin	United States
	3	Texas	United States
	3	Buenos Aires	Argentina
	3	Ontario	Canada
	2	Berlin	Germany
	2	Tel Aviv	Israel
	2	Nebraska	United States
	1	Colorado	United States
	1	Quebec	Canada
	1	Sao Paulo	Brazil
	1	District Of Columbia	United States
	1	Louisiana	United States
	1	Connecticut	United States
	1	Arizona	United States
	1	England	United Kingdom
	1	Emilia-romagna	Italy
	1	Minnesota	United States
	1	Gauteng	South Africa
	1	North Carolina	United States

From what I understand, the numbers represent pageloads, or views. Kind of. i think. but not individuals, at any rate.

I'm also on the first page of a google search for the phrases "raj patel sex ed" "what i am in your life"(which was just part of a sentence when I said it, but taken out of context, is sort of poetic) and "darling doggie" . This is probably not interesting to anyone except me. This blog is also on the 10th page for a search of "iowa teen pregnancy prevention programs" (someone in Ankeny was very determined...if you are still looking, let me know, I have connections!) It looks like people have found this blog while searching for information on breastfeeding teachers, sex with teachers, weekend sex, composting sex and "'psyche myself out' sex". there were a few looking for a combination of "homemade" "teachers" and "sex" (is homemade teacher porn really this popular?) and a few looking for breastfeeding support, especially for teen moms(La Leche League!)

Someone in Seattle looked at the blog 32 times between June and September. Thanks, whoever you are!!

For the most part, though, there were no referring links. People found me through Facebook, emails or the blogs of other amazing people(namely Christofer, Erin and Josh).

Anyway, now that I've consumed most of my evening by obsessively pouring over StatCounter entries(and writing about it as though it were fascinating) I should move on to other things. like cleaning my kitchen.