Putting the Garden to Bed

We have a Community Garden plot here in town, it being a place that, unlike ANY place on our own property, actually gets, you know, sun. We had to put it to bed recently, tearing out all the perfectly happy kale and chard and lettuce (wail!), and raking and mulching it, and harboring the suspicion that we'll have even more volunteer husk cherries next year than we did this year--thanks, Cake!--and, of course, uprooting and hauling to the car the most giant, ridiculously heavy, hugely indulgent dried-up sunflower that ever was:

For all its inconveniences, the nice thing about our Community Garden plot is that we HAVE to get it done (or pay a fine). And that's why that plot is all tidy and resting, while here at home the leaves need to be raked over the gardens, and the herbs need to have hay spread on them, and we haven't finished planting the tulip bulbs, and Matt STILL hasn't moved those bushes that he promised to move for me last fall, and I'd really like to move the compost heap and get rid of that big brush pile, and all the ungainly bushes and shrubs on the property need to be hacked back yet again...

And no, I have no idea what we're going to do with that giant sunflower that the girls dragged home, either.