It's time for the last mowing of the season.

Nancy's mother is out of town, and I took care of her lawn over the weekend while Nancy cleaned out her gardens. I will mow our lawn as soon as possible -- but probably not until the weekend.

The last mowing is important because you use a catcher and collect all the early leaves. You also lower the blade height so more leaves will blow off and the snow won't knock the grass flat. The removal of some leaves and the shorter grass will make raking easier once we finally do that, probably around Thanksgiving.

Nancy has dug all of our dahlias after carefully labeling them. Some of them are already stored, on shelves I installed in the basement just for the dahlias, and others are drying out in the garage before we store them.

Granddaughter Maeve and I ate our last watermelon Sunday. We picked it just before the frost, and it was tasty and good. The Peace, a yellow variety, was the favorite for both of us. Maeve has done a good job of getting rid of my bias against eating watermelon on cold weather.

If you want to check it out, Sunday's column covers a conference on historic gardens that Nancy and I attended at Old Sturbridge Village.

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