Division and diversity: A gardener’s tale

Posted on 2020-11-02 by Hecate

In the garden, diversity is the way to go.

I love peonies, but a whole yard full of them? Glory-be would break out in late May, last two to three weeks, and then… nada.

photo of bean field covering entire foreground, with line of woods in distance, bright blue sky

Field of Beans
“Bean Field” by compoundwarp

I love white flowers, and have even toyed with the idea of creating a moon garden in a corner of the back lot, but a whole garden only in white? Might as well set up a symphony orchestra with nothing but flutes.

As for veggies, I ask you, do you really want that many zucchini? Or tomatoes, or beans, or take your pick.

And division is downright healthy. I look at those Siberian irises (yes, they are immigrants), which have ballooned into five or six boisterous stands, and I realize it’s time. They must be divided this fall if they’re going to flaunt those gorgeous purply-blue blooms next spring.

Given the timing of this post and my choice of title, you may think you know what’s coming next: oh, she’s going to get into the election. Well, only sideways. I’ve been thinking a lot about the divisions—even yawning chasms—opening among folks in this country, the staking out of some putative Us against some imaginary Them.

That’s a problem that it will take a lot more people than me to solve, but in honor of election day, I figured it was a good time to start looking at some of the diversity in our country that spans red states and blue states. When you get right down to it, we gardeners all live in green states.

So this past Friday, while two inches of wet snow fell relentlessly on my surroundings, my friend Hillary gave me a tour of her thriving garden in Charleston, South Carolina.

She warned me beforehand not to expect much going on in her garden this time of year, but as she walked me around (we used FaceTime), I saw plenty happening. And no wonder. As she started taking us outside, she wondered whether she’d need a sweater; it was only 65 degrees. (I think it was 28 degrees here in western Mass. at the time.) She walked me out into a green dream.

Hillary’s garden is bordered on one side by a tidal creek, and rimmed by trees. Fortunately, the land sits high enough that even when hurricanes roar through, the creek doesn’t invade her yard. All that water close by, combined with plenty of trees and shrubs, encourages lots of birds to visit or move in for the season. You’ll hear a little more about that in a moment.

As in many coastal areas, the soil is very sandy, which poses a problem for growing some kinds of plants (I’m taking Hillary’s word for this, since the plants she showed me looked like they had no complaints).

close-up shot of one red cherry tomato nestled among leaves on a withering cherry plant

The last cherry tomato
Photo by Hillary

True, the veggie garden that occupied two sizable raised beds had wound way down; the summer veggies had long since done their thing and gasped their last. We found a couple of lonely little cherry tomatoes still hanging on, and a few lively marigolds were holding their own, but the rest was gone. I have to say that Hillary cleans up her veggie beds much more than I do, but we both see the same results once the veggies are gone: the weeds move in. And we have the same philosophy on dealing with those: maybe soon, but more likely next spring.

Which will arrive a lot sooner there than here. I looked up the skinny on Charleston’s climate. Average annual snowfall in inches: 0. Zee-row. Of course, that’s just an average, and as we know, there are outliers. Hillary recalled one winter several years back when they had a horrific 5-day freeze, with the temperatures barely moving above 20 the whole time. And it did snow, something that happens maybe once every five years, but it usually melts quickly. This particular time, though, the snow stayed, and turned into ice. The city had one snowplow, reserved for keeping the runways at the joint civilian/military airport cleared. You can imagine the rest.

Looking out through sliding glass door, outside which snow has risen about two feet high, with deck railings and planters at edge of deck covered in snow, and snowy landscape in background with line of snow-frosted trees visible in far background, and gray sky. Interior in foreground shows some houseplants silhouetted against the snow.

Why so many New Englanders hit Mexico in February

I love these stories about weather events that seem like disasters in one part of the country but are taken as normal in another. Here in the Massachusetts part of the Connecticut River Valley, we get plenty of stretches in the teens and twenties any time and sometimes many times between November and March, and a good many days around 0 or less. Every winter we anticipate hitting -10 to -20 at least once. I remember the dog’s water dish—sitting next to an outside wall—freezing solid one winter.

But then, if we were about to get hit by a real hurricane, we’d be freaking out, while Charlestonians seem to regard them much the same way we see our two- to three-footer blizzards: plan ahead with batteries and candles and matches, batten down the hatches, and come outside afterwards to see what broke. Big difference is, we shovel snow while they shovel mud.

The Charleston averages make for very mild winters; possibly a two- to three-day mild freeze in late December or early January. Hold that thought: there’s their winter. But December’s average high is 63, with an average low of 41; January goes waayyyyy down to an average high of 60 and average low of 39. February goes back up to December levels, and by March, spring is in swing for sure. Summers are hot and steamy. The climate is wetter than the US average, with moderate rainfalls throughout the cooler months and plenty of water coming down June through September.

NOAA map of US and Mexico showing path of Hurricane Zeta, with western parts of North and South Carolina highlighted in orange, indicating tropical storm force at 8 am EDT on 29 October

Screenshot of NOAA’s tracking of Zeta

There is that occasional inconvenient hurricane. Hurricane Zeta, even though it didn’t hit the SC coast, was making itself felt while we talked, and I could see the tops of the trees swaying in the 35 mph gusts. The hurricane also spun off some heavy rainfall that came down after our tour. Fortunately, it held off during, so I got to see more.

Hurricanes aside, with that kind of climate, you’d expect a long growing season.

small rosebush with four red roses blooming, bottom of tree trunk showing in far background

Knockout roses
Photo by Hillary

Charleston County is in USDA Zone 9a. Some things that would have to be moved indoors by now or consigned to perdition, in my Zone 5b (edging towards Zone 4) garden, thrive outdoors year-round for Hillary and her neighbors.

The rosemary grows nonstop, and has to be trimmed back frequently. The chrysanthemums come back year after year. Her papyrus plants look right at home next to some nano-ponds; in this setting, they too have to be controlled or they take over. Knockout roses, bred to withstand the South Carolina humidity and bugs, were full of blooms; those, too, had to be kept trimmed to civilized size. Somebody next door had some enthusiastic young fig trees going.

closeup of wild ginger plant, broad green leaves with white blossoms growing from center

Wild ginger abloom
Photo by Hillary

Aside from the roses and the marigolds and the papyrus, I did recognize some of the plants in the garden: bleeding heart and hydrangea and wild ginger, for example. But Hillary had to tell me what many of the plants were, because you wouldn’t see them growing this far north. (That goes for some of the weed plants as well, which sound a lot more tenacious than our New England annoyances.) I’d heard of lantana, but had never seen it before, at least I don’t think so. And I may have seen aloe growing in a pot somewhere, but I never knew they produced dramatic orangey-red flower clusters on a stem rising far above the leaves.

For some plants, Hillary could furnish the local name but wasn’t sure of the botanical name. One was a “tractor plant,” so called for the shape of the leaves, like tiny green tractor seats. I tried doing an online search for the plant to locate the scientific name, but came up with an entirely different kind of tractor plant, as you can see here. So if anybody can put a botanical name to the plant producing these tractor-seat leaves, please let us know.

The entrance to a Russian tractor plant, eight white columns with blue bases, with a white horizontal beam over the columns carrying the name of the plant in Russian, with the year 1930 at the far right; four people, scattered, walking across the expanse of gray concrete in front of the plant

Tractor plant (Volgograd)
Photo by Volgograd District Govt.

Small plant with rounded green leaves that look a bit like tractor seats, in a flowerbed lined with rounded river rocks; a few miscellaneous plants in background, and a small strip of green lawn in lower right corner

South Carolina tractor plant
Photo by Hillary

Some plants had familiar names but looked very different from their supposed counterparts up here. Those hydrangeas were growing under a gigantic magnolia tree, which in Charleston’s climate never loses its leaves. Hillary told me a fascinating tidbit. Magnolias are a primeval tree: the first flowering tree in the arboreal kingdom. Nature sure went all out on that first prototype.

Then there was the hibiscus, which had flowers that looked a bit like those on my winter-hardy hibiscus, but with very different leaves. I concluded, from later investigation online, that hers is tropical hibiscus (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis), same genus as my hibiscus but a different species entirely. Sorry I can’t tell you which species, because I didn’t catch any but the fancy breeder name when I bought it. What I can tell you is that her hibiscus and mine are in highly contrasting conditions right now, and I have the photos to prove it.

bright red hibiscus flower and a few hibiscus leaves, peeking from behind a white vertical strip of wood on far right of the frame; green hedge fills most of background

Her hibiscus
Photo by Hillary

died-away perennial hibiscus plant in snow: about a dozen cut-back stems with a few dead brown leaves still hanging from them

My hibiscus—same day!

As different as her magnolia and my magnolia. I don’t have a picture of hers, and I can’t even bear to show you how mine looked after this last very hard frost. Believe me, it ain’t pretty.

Sasanqua camellia plant with deep green shiny leaves, three deep pink flowers in bloom and many more buds showing

Sasanqua camellia
Photo by Hillary

So, while we here in the northeast are crossing the plants off our list of garden action for the foreseeable future (unless you count my Siberian dogwood stems turning bright red after all the leaves have dropped), folks in Charleston still have plenty to look forward to. Hillary showed me her sasanqua camellia, with three lovely deep pink flowers but many buds. She says, “It will go crazy with all the buds beginning to unfold. It’s usually really gorgeous by the time Thanksgiving arrives.” Now there is something to give thanks about. I’m going to want a photo of its Thanksgiving condition.

Other things are growing furiously in the neighborhood: election lawn signs. There are Republican growths and Democratic growths, and I got a look at the contending parties down at the corner of the street: on one corner, a bevy of Democratic Party candidates; on the opposite corner, a parade of Republican contenders. What struck me was the multitude of signs.

lawn signs for Republican candidates

On the right, we have…
Photo by Hillary

yard signs for Democratic candidates

and on the left we have…  (yes, I switched the positions on purpose)
Photo by Hillary

Here in my deep-blue Massachusetts valley, you’ll see Biden-Harris signs and Black Lives Matter signs along the road and the occasional Vote! It Matters signs, but not many others. That’s not an indication that people don’t care about who’s representing them in Washington or Boston; it just means that there isn’t much doubt. Most of the local races don’t even attract a Republican candidate, and we assume the re-election of our congressional representative, Jim McGovern, and our senator, Bob Markey, is a foregone conclusion (so does Politico, and they have access to polling data I can’t get at).

But things must be more exciting in South Carolina right now. The Senate seat held by Lindsey Graham since 2003 may just get a new occupant after this election, although Graham seems to have pulled ahead of his opponent Jaime Williams in the latest polls. But it’s sure not a ho-hum situation. Feelings may be running high. Between when I saw those signs and when Hillary captured a photo, somebody had plucked the Biden sign from the Democratic side.

close-up of yard sign, deep yellow background at top with purple lettering saying "Thank you, Suffragists", then a strip of purple background with white lettering ("100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment"), and at the bottom another strip of purple lettering on yellow background ("Celebrate women's right to vote!")

Always relevant!
Photo by Hillary

Hillary’s own lawn is growing a sign with a longer-term view, one that will be relevant well after this particular election. Who can’t use a reminder, now and then, about what the 19th Amendment was all about?

I did promise something about birds, didn’t I? Hillary is an avid bird watcher, and along with a Meyer lemon tree and a crape myrtle, the back yard has grown several bird feeders on poles. The hummingbirds that hang around all summer have moved on south, so the hummingbird feeders have been retired.

But some migratory birds are still wandering through, and the seed feeders make a welcome stop. I asked about squirrels, since every habitual feeder of birds I know has waged a frustrating battle against squirrels raiding the feeders.

Yellow-rumped warbler, a grayish-brown bird with white throat and bright yellow patch on back rump, perched on a small tree branch running diagonally across the frame, from bottom left to top right

“Yellow-rumped Warbler”
by Dan Pancamo

Apparently that’s not a problem in this garden; the poles have sliding baffles that thus far have completely baffled the squirrels. Sometimes, says Hillary, they go flying off the pole and then sit there like they’re wondering what on earth just happened. The feeders are safe from marauders and continue to support those of the feathered persuasion.

I asked about favorites, and she mentioned a species locally known as “butter butts.” From the photo here, you can see how they got that name. If you want to be more dignified about it, you could call them yellow-rumped warblers. The ornithologists do, but don’t you think butter-butt is the perfect descriptor?

Let’s meander past one other feature in this garden that I found delightful; it has me thinking about finding a place in my garden for something of the sort. It’s a rock garden that reminds me of Japanese Zen gardens. This one borders the side of the house where all the pipes and utility cables run, and solved the problem of roots getting into the pipes.

strip of Zen-like rock garden with brown flagstone pieces arranged to represent land, smooth gray pebbles to represent water, arranged in undulating strip between borders of light, rounded rocks and other contrasting stones

A river runs through it
Photo by Hillary

I loved the design of this space at first sight, and especially the feel of a landscape painted with nothing but stones: solid ground, high points, a river running through it, and the arrangement pulls your eye sweetly down the stretch. A lot of the other beds are edged with river stones that Hillary has collected from all over; this rock-garden-landscape neatly picks up and completes the motif. Plus, it’s kind of nice to have a stretch of garden you don’t need to weed! I was beginning to think even more seriously about this—until Hillary told me that what she’d expected to be a three-hour job took three weeks to complete.

So there we are, the first installment in the virtual tour of the US, celebrating our diversity. We’ll get to division at some later date. The winter is long. At least, up north here where I’m writing it sure is.

Now your turn! Please post a comment (your email address doesn’t appear to anyone but me) on anything this post inspires you to say, or use one of the following questions:

  1. Do you expect any more action in your garden before the end of this year? What kind?
  2. Which do you think you’ll get first: spring, or a Covid-19 vaccine?
  3. Want to give me a tour of your garden, this fall-into-winter, or later? Let me know!

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Things get squirrely

Posted on 2020-10-25 by Hecate

Hopping about

Lately, I’ve been wondering a lot about squirrels.

You know those busy bushy-tailed rodents, whether you have the gray kind, or the black or the red or some combination thereof. Hereabouts, they’re gray, they nest up in the trees (at least, I’ve been told those are squirrels’ nests up there, the big messy ones), they run up and down the trees and along fences and across porches and decks and tables.

Occasionally, if you have a bird feeder, they raid it.

Young squirrel inside a wooden bird feeder with clear plastic face. The squirrel is standing on a couple inches of seeds, one paw and face poking out through the opening between the plastic front and wooden roof of feeder.

Never enough birdseed for these little guys.
“Happy Young Red Squirrel” by Dave_S. is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

Whatever they’re doing, they always look purposeful. Have you ever seen one strolling along like some Parisian flâneur? I sure haven’t. They hop along the ground like they’ve been spring-loaded; they scramble decisively up trees; they execute acrobatic leaps onto those bird feeders; they dash across my deck like there’s a fire somewhere. They hurry here and scurry there, lacking only briefcases to round out the impression of urgent mission. But as far as I can see, they accomplish nothing.

When they stop at all, it is usually to dig. And dig. And dig.

The digging seems indiscriminate. They’ve been leaving divots in what’s left of the lawn after a parched summer. They start excavation sites every time I lay down new mulch. Sometimes they’ll bury a nut, but I doubt they ever find them again (having a digging fork, I often do).

At one with nature

I’m feeling a lot like those squirrels myself lately. About a week ago, I even left some random holes for a couple of days before I thought better of it and filled them in. Not that I have been out in the garden as much as I should be, but whenever I am, it seems that I’m constantly busy, hours at a stretch, hauling this around back, lugging that to the front, setting everything out and then putting it away or moving it 10 yards east or west, rummaging through boxes in the garage looking for the clippers, the spray bottle, the cayenne shaker, the hose nozzle, the wire, the twine, the tape, the wire snips, the loppers. You get the idea. But it doesn’t feel like I’m getting much, if anything, done.

Everywhere I go in the garden, my mind goes squirrely-gigging off somewhere else. I know this is partly caused by the inexorable and increasingly rapid march towards winter. A light frost last week, another heavy one forecast for later this week. We may have seen the last of fall’s days in the sixty-degree range, and I fear it’s permanent sayonara to the seventies after last Thursday.

Garden tools laid out on lawn next to flower bed, along with several coneflowers ready for transplanting

So many plan(t)s, so little time…

So, I have to get the rest of the mulch spread, but first I really have to weed the north bed, but before I do that I need to set up the raised beds in the veggie-herb strip but before I do that I have to transplant the sage and the tarragon and the oregano and the geranium (what’s left of that after Tamerlane the Woodchuck decided it would make a nice lagniappe), but before I do that I need to find pots for them but I don’t have the right size so I have to run to the garden store…. And did I write enough voter postcards or is there time to send more?

Of course, now that I have started reading up on the leave-it-be approach to fall cleanup, I’m wondering whether I should be doing anything at all. I’m aghast to think that I’ve been wreaking havoc or worse for those garden denizens we should try to keep around.

The bee all

Close-up photo of a solitary ground-dwelling bee, dark brown abdomen with golden fuzz rimming head & thorax, sitting on a tan fragment of wood or bone, dark soil and some lighter crumbly material underneath and in background, and the initial leaves of a dicotyledonous seedling below and slightly behind bee

“Ground-dwelling bee” by Rob Cruickshank is licensed under CC BY 2.0

This week I worry about ground-dwelling and other solitary bees, a concern precipitated by reading yet another of Margaret Roach’s wonderfully informative interviews. If you’re a gardening fan, you probably already know about Margaret Roach, but if you don’t, read to the bottom of this post and you’ll find a link to her site. Sign up for her newsletter; it’s pure gold!

This week M.R. interviewed Heather Holm, a bee expert and a fount of information. After digesting that interview, I dug around a bit on that handy old internet and found a bee-centered site with more info (see below for links).

I already knew that the honeybees we amateurs tend to see as the bee standard are not even native to North America; they’re European imports. But I never imagined that we could have nearly 4,000 native species of bees in the USA! Most of them do not hive together in large numbers up in trees. There are digger bees, tunneling bees, bees that make nests in hollow stalks, bees that nest in old logs or dead branches, bees that hibernate under fallen leaves. Many of them, individual female heads-of-larval-household.

Now I hesitate not just about raking leaves but also about clearing fallen twigs, cutting back dead perennials (except daylilies, which apparently are useless, for bees at least), and digging anywhere. Maybe the two bumblebees I disturbed yesterday, atop the seedhead of a new coneflower, were discussing plans for their hibernation home.

Which brings us to…

Funny how much damage you can do to others in your environment when you don’t even notice they’re there, or know how much your careless actions might endanger them. Well, not funny, really. Yesterday I participated in a two-hour anti-racism training workshop via Zoom. It confirmed what I already felt in my bones. I have to keep stopping to ask myself what I’m assuming without knowing enough. To remember that however normal I may look, I am not the norm. Nobody is. Maybe if we all recited that mantra to ourselves often, even put it into practice a bit, we’d have a better environment for all humans to blossom to full potential.

It does takes attention and energy and effort. What garden doesn’t?

Spice jar of cayenne pepper powder, topped with shaker head, in garden bed next to coneflower plant with one pink-petaled flower

Saying it with spice

In case you’re wondering, though: yes, I did get the new coneflowers in, and liberally sprinkled their leaves with cayenne to ward off toothy pests. It shouldn’t harm the pollinators or any beneficial insects, and it should repel Thumper and maybe even Tamerlane with no harm done but a capsicum kick. And the flowers’ pollen and nectar could help those bumblebees fatten up enough to get themselves through the winter ahead. As long as the squirrels steer clear.

 

Those links I promised:

And you? Please post a comment below, or reply to others. If it’s the first time, it may take 2 to 24 hours for your comment or reply to show up (I have to approve it–to prevent spammers), but after the first time, anything you post using the same email address should load automatically. Your email address does not publish with your comment. If you can’t think of what to say, try one of these questions:

  1. What do you do to keep yourself on track to finish all the fall garden tasks?
  2. Any assumptions you’ve been making, in the garden or out of it, that you’ve recently started questioning? Why?
  3. Do you have any idea what on earth those squirrels are always so busy about? (And what kind of squirrels live near you?)
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October surprises (in the garden)

Posted on 2020-10-16 by Hecate

Rainy days

It’s been raining this week. Oh my, how it rained on Wednesday! And it’s here again today, Friday.

Colorful oil-crayon drawing of autumn scene: apple tree with some bare branches and some still with leaves, standing amid tall grasses in yellows, greens, reds, and pink, with a green hill and gray cloudy sky in background

“Mt. Norwottuck and Apple Tree,” (unhay’d)” Mt. Pollux, Amherst. 15 X 22″. oil crayon Ritz

Two days ago, cars whipped past on the road outside my workroom window, throwing up sheets of spray in artistic arcs. The birds and the bunny went into hiding. The raindrops were huge. I could tell because they splattered up in gouts when they hit the glass-topped table on the deck. When it was all done, I stepped outside to check the rain gauge.

Sometimes, the rain disappoints. All this past summer, whatever I thought a major downpour turned out to leave only a sliver of an inch in that glass tube. But on Wednesday, when it started, I had hopes–not fond in the original foolish sense–of finding an inch or more measured by the time it stopped. By midday, the rain had already undoubtedly washed off the cayenne powder protecting the ravaged sedum from Brer Rabbit–or, judging by the progressive ravaging, adding to the excitement in his menu. I knew I wouldn’t have to water again any day soon.

Clear glass rain gauge in a planter, with water up to the 2-inch mark

We got two inches!

We got two inches, said the gauge. And after a glorious nearly-summer day yesterday dried up some of that, I expect to find at least an inch more recorded in the next 24 hours. (Note after the fact: we got just a smidgin under 2.5 inches, and I have a photo to prove it. But let’s not overdo it.)

The new Japanese forest grasses (aka hakonechloa) and the cardinal flowers I just put into their new berths won’t need my ministrations, barring some sprinkles of cayenne-just-in-case. The ground will be plump and moist wherever I figure out to place the new coneflowers that arrived Thursday.

Coneflowers? What coneflowers?

I know, I know. I promised I wouldn’t buy any more plants. But they were on sale, and I’d already resisted the siren call of five other sales, day after day after day. Isn’t there a rule that you get to buy after you resist five times? I followed the rule of six: buy one for each time you resist, and then add one to qualify for the free shipping.

And I can plead inevitability. I tried to cancel the order after I made it. I placed it last Friday morning, I went off to do a bunch of other things, and by 4:40pm I suffered such remorse that I called the store’s number six times (once for each plant) and got only their voicemail, even though they claimed to be open till 5pm. So it was kismet. The store reopened on Monday morning and dispatched the plants immediately. No fools, they.

I know: you do not approve. But I am resigned.

Coneflowers in quart pots waiting for replanting; some in flower with yellow or orange-red petals; lawn, hemlocks in medium background, fields, woods, and cloudy grey sky in distant background.

The coneflowers line up to wait their turn

It is the season of resignation in the garden. Tasks cry to be done, and I’ll do what I can (thank you, rain; not today!). For the rest, there is next year. Next spring, when the snow melts and green or even red (talking peony here) shoots venture up, I can have another go at it. The coneflowers will get planted this weekend, though I’m not quite sure where, and they will come up in the spring. These are tough little babies. And I can move them next year.

Maybe this is part of the garden’s charm. It’s so malleable. It doesn’t always shape up the way you hoped, but you can keep trying new stuff. You don’t get infinite possibilities. No way will I be relocating the 70-year-old sugar maple out front, even if the power company frowns on, and lops off, its street-facing branches.

photo of narrow strip of garden plot with stone edging at right, a couple of herb plants in right foreground, low fenced-in area running vertically up the photo, with only one plant in it; tarp-covered ground on left side of photo; miscellaneous shrubs in background behind fence and tarps.

Veggie-herb bed, ready (almost) for the big overhaul

I think of the older trees as the garden’s skeleton. The soil hosts the internal organs. But I get to tone, shape, and bulk up the muscles (think, shrubs and small trees) and between us, the garden and I try out whole wardrobes of seasonal clothes. I’m still working on that, and have yet to earn enough chops to qualify to accessorize. A big reconfiguration of the veggie-herb bed looms this month, major muscle work in all respects.

And I wish I could postpone those coneflowers. But ain’t that the problem with impulse buying? Now that I’ve bought yet another shirt, where is the closet space, and what do I wear it with?

I try to find the moral here. Usually, I can find a moral in the garden. But since it’s raining, I’m indoors and the moral is washing away outside, along with the cayenne.

Picture of a list of tasks taped to a large roadmap on wall, next to a novelty light fixture with Route 66 roadsign and old-fashioned wood-sided station wagon at bottom

“Checklist” by Marcin Wichary (CC BY 2.0 license)

What’s left is anticipation, with clock ticking. So many plants still to go in. Checklist lengthening: rip out the fencing around the old veggie-herb patch, install raised beds, put the final strip of edging in somewhere, get mulch onto garden beds, place pebble paths, clear brush from driveway to ___(???where oh where???), get rid of garden refuse bags. And we’re halfway to November.

But maybe the garden is the most comforting distraction. We all (in the U.S., at least) know what happens in November, right? Frost country or not, there’s an election coming, and I’m tensed in anticipation. My ballot has already gone in–easier than coneflowers!–and I confirmed its acceptance online. Now I can only wait. I keep checking the latest polls more anxiously than I consult the rain gauge.

I know the garden will have spring, and new life, after the winter. Will we?

Your turn now. Please leave a comment, on whatever you’re inspired to say in response to this post, or pick a question:

  1. What fall garden task do you suspect you’re not going to get to?
  2. (if you’re a US citizen) Did you vote yet? How was the experience? If you didn’t vote yet, do you have a plan to do so?
  3. Mulled cider, or mulled wine?
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Lazier gardening is in style at last!

Posted on 2020-10-09 by Hecate
A small farm store at the back of photo, with bottom of bright red roof overhanging a small terrace with display of bottled and packaged goods; foreground shows a gray graveled area with displays pots of flowering chrysantemums and tipped-sideways baskets of winter squashes on cloth-covered tiers of tables; near foreground shows a couple dozen medium and large pumpkins on ground at the middle and along either far side of photo

Fall’s abounding at the farm store!

Fall is arriving so early this year. Too early for me, no matter which standpoint I’m looking from: how much time and effort I’ve put into getting things to grow, only to see them keel over; or the timetable of advice on fall cleanup. Every time I go out to the garden, I find evidence of demise (sometimes obscured by fallen leaves, but I peek underneath), along with garden denizens’ busy preparations for winter’s long wail.

Area of light brown mulch, with scattered small yellow leaves on it, and a metal plant marker just behind a little hole in the ground

There was a dahlia here just yesterday.

The little dahlia annual, which never did much anyway after I popped it into its allotted space in late July, possibly excepting a couple of anemic and barely perceptible blooms, has now disappeared more than entirely: there is but a dent in the ground where it once lived. Somebody must have found it very tasty, down to the tips of its tiny toe roots. The dogwoods, so late to leaf out in the spring (seriously: June??) are already shedding leaves faster than a Labrador retriever in hot weather sheds fur. And to much the same effect; it’s blowing all over the place. The local squirrels have been having quite literally field day after field day with the black walnuts dropped by my neighbors’ trees. They’ve squirreled the evidence of their nutcracking skills all over the garden beds. Which, by the way, makes me wonder why Tchaikovsky didn’t put one of them in the starring role in that ballet. Black walnuts being notoriously resistant to extraction of their meat, these are squirreal pros, I tell you.

Gray squirrel in profile, perched on post of white deck railing; green lawn and some bushes in far background

The nutcracker

Graying mulch on the ground, with two pieces of black walnut husk atop it

The nut

In short, after all that painstaking summer work, the place is a mess. Not a weedy green mess, no. A death scene from Camille mess. I hear nature’s parting moan.

Time for a cleanup?

Which gets me thinking about garden cleanup. My neighbors’ yards all seem to look so spiffy by the time winter rolls in: leaves cleared, dead foliage removed, anything outside the coldframes that isn’t an evergreen trimmed to regulation height and breadth. As for me—well, this year is the first time I cut the peonies back before March, and that is only because they were covered in so much gruesome powdery mildew that I followed the advice of some online expert to get the foliage and stalks off the property, lest the affliction reappear early next year.

long strip of garden plot with some tall wooden stakes, a few inches of old stalks left after cutting back 3 mature peony plants; some chives in foreground. blue tarp and orange bucket on the ground at the right and the top of a gray stone wall running along the left side

I already got the peonies cut back…

But as for the rest?

I’m finding that there are two schools of thought on this. I used to think there was only the one, the garden equivalent of dostadning, that suddenly buzz-wordy death cleaning. Throw out everything nonessential so the heirs won’t have to. Fallen leaves, out! Dead stalks, begone!

All that detritus, say the advisors, can provide winter harbor for nasty diseases and pests and practically begs them to reappear in spring legions: hungry caterpillars busting out of pupas, weevil larvae awakening to chew on every tender root, fungal spores soaring on the spring breezes in search of victims. Why leave trouble such comfy winter bunk space? Clean it all out, lay on nice clean mulch to tuck everything in for the winter, and then go inside and mull your cider.

I’ve always been a bit skeptical about the indoor dostadning. Shouldn’t the heirs have to expend some effort for their inheritance? I’m reminded of the cleanup my mother, her sister, and their cousin had to do after my two great-aunts and my great-uncle keeled over in quick succession. I won’t say the greaties were exactly hoarders, but huge collections of ancient newspapers and magazines cluttered the entire homestead. While cleaning them out, the potential heirs found at least two invalid wills and $50,000 in cash stashed hidden amidst the paper. Believe me, once probate was figured out, the heirs sure appreciated that inheritance. If the greaties had cleaned up on their own, the cash might have been lost, or spent in some mad geriatric spree before anyone could inherit.

Leave it!

Which brings me to the second school of thought, one I discovered only recently but find much more to my taste. (Some might say it is not taste but a tendency to inertia, but let’s ignore them. They probably wax their legs. Regularly.)

Leave it lie! says the new school. Let nature be nature.

A patch of garden in October, with dead leaves, straw mulch and debris from dead flowers and arugula, chickenwire fence towards back and cement stepping stones in foreground

Leave it? Really? Not clean this up? Seriously?

If you clean out all the dead stuff from your garden, you’ll be removing many of the beneficial bugs, along with habitat both for them and for the birds that feed on plant predators. Did you know that there are many species of ground-dwelling bees, and others that nest in dead wood? So if you clear the grounds entirely, you are removing the bees and their eggs, and will have fewer pollinators next year. Getting rid of all your dead brush means less shelter from winter blasts, for the birds you’ll want to be seeing and hearing next spring. Haul away all the dead flowers along with their seedheads, and you’re eliminating free birdseed. Remove all the foliage that could be left atop the ground, and you’re losing winter insulation for your daintier perennials and eventual fertilizer for all your plants.

I’ll tell you more about all this in a later post, and possibly a book review. For now, trust me: there are pros making this case. I do hesitate a little; the grounds are not photogenic.

But then, when was nature meant to pose?

Gardens teeter at the intersection of humankind and nature. Humans seem to aspire to total control: orderly, regimented planting and harvest schedules, routing all potential pests and then importing any critters—ladybugs, praying mantis, parasitic wasps, butterflies—that we find useful or ornamental. The word hubris comes to mind: an insistence on control in pursuit of a total perfection whose secrets we think we know, rather than striving for balance, a seesawing of opposites, the ebb and flow, flow and ebb of problems and solutions.

Bare dead branch lying on brick walkway next to cement steps and the edge of a shrub with dark red, small leaves

Thing that went bump in the day, off its base camp on the roof.

So this year, I’m thinking, I’ll let the heirs duke it out in the spring. Brushpile in the corner of the yard (more candidates came down in our high winds this past week), leaves nesting where they will atop the mulch. And I go in to the mulled cider.

This does not, however, mean that Tamerlane the woodchuck’s future is secure. The jury is still out on that one, and if I find him munching on the new hakonechloa or the heuchera, I’m going full nasty human. It would be unnatural to do otherwise.

Now, have your say in a comment below:

  1. Do you lean more to the death-cleaning or the leave-it approach? Why? Have you changed your approach on preparations for winter, and if so, what prompted you to make the change?
  2. When was your first frost this year (if you’ve had one already), and when is your usual first frost? (If you never get frosts, please don’t rub it in; just choose a different question. Thank you. <small grin>)
  3. Care to share your recipe for mulled cider? Or other favorite fall recipe?

Remember: first time you post a comment, it won’t appear on the site until I approve it, but I try to get to those pretty quickly. Once you have one approved comment, any subsequent comment (if you use the same name and email address) should go public immediately. Let me know if that doesn’t happen for you. And notice that subscribing for notifications of new posts is easy-peasy: if you’re making a comment, there’s a little box you can tick after the comment to get onto the mailing list. Have a lovely week.

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Inconstant Gardener bursts upon the world…

Posted on 2020-10-01 by Hecate

You might ask: How can you start a gardening blog in October, for heaven’s sake?

forest with yellow autumn leaves on trees, and brown leaves covering the forest floor

“Forest with Autumn Leaves” by Image Catalog. Creative Commons License CC0 1.0

To which I say: Why do you think I call myself Inconstant Gardener? I was going to start the blog sooner, but I was too busy in August and September scrambling to finish the stuff I hadn’t gotten to in July. Or June. Or May. Or. . . but you get the idea.

At some point this past summer, must have been early July, I got the monthly e-newsletter from one of my local garden centers, all about the fun things you can do in July now that the big garden work is done. Kick back and relax. Fire up the grill. Have some margaritas on your deck and wave at the flowers as they nod their smiling heads back atcha.

To which I said (mentally): Ha. Ha. Ha.

It’s been busy!

 
Gardener Anthony kneels on lawn in front of shrubbery bed, hammer in right hand, installing strips of black landscape edging

Anthony sweats over the landscape edging job

Even with a part-time able garden helper doing most of the heavy work, we were still only halfway through weeding and edging and landscape cloth-ing and mulching all the beds around the perimeter of the yard and around the house. The crabgrass was wriggling in everywhere, like those soldiers you see in videos, training to squirm under barbed wire. A whole army of them. More than a few of the plants that had arrived in June were still waiting to go into the ground, and I could hear them gasping and groaning.

Come August, my late-season veggie garden plans blew to smithereens when a friendly local woodchuck moved in under the deck. That took care of the surfeit of parsley and basil. This rodent has such high-herbal tastes, he could be French. One day the parsley was burgeoning 18 inches high and I made plans to harvest a lot of it and turn it into parsley butter. Even put the herb-butter cube molds out on the counter. The next morning, as I watered the hibiscus (and noted worrisome inroads by rose slugs), I looked up at the herb bed above the stone wall and darned if that parsley wasn’t looking awfully short. At first I thought I’d misoverestimated its height, but then I realized that amongst the short leafy bits there were naked bare stalks, where the higher-rising fronds had been chomped off at woodchuck-chin elevation. The following day, the first basil plant in the row had been subjected to a brutal indiscriminate pruning. Or maybe I should say discriminate: all the tender aromatic tips were gone. I have named the interloper Tamerlane, because he lays waste to everything tasty in his path.

photo of woodchuck next to deck's edge, on stone wall and contemplating plants.

Tamerlane debates: the Blushing Turtle geranium or the French tarragon next?

Meanwhile, we were in near-drought, with temperatures in the 90s for a long stretch, and since my low-end but neatly distributed watering system turned out to have holes that turned it into a (single) geyser generator, I spent a lot of time outside watering and watching the crabgrass–and only the crabgrass–grow. 

Then we were on to September. Days getting shorter at an alarming pace, no more out-to-weed at 6am (not only is it dark; it’s cold). No more staying outside till 8:30pm to water; now the sun abandons ship by 6:30, and I have to leave the landscape to the mosquitos and earwigs and whatever just ate one of the new geraniums Rozanne, down to her little crown. (Those of you who know plants know that they have a funny habit of keeping their crowns at ground level rather than on their heads.) I was almost grateful for the early frosts that whacked us two nights running in mid-September, that “first frost” date that until now I’d been considering only theoretical. Down went zinnias, marigolds; the dogwood leaves are still wafting earthwards from that shock, so I find myself raking leaves out of the beds in order to get the rest of the plants in. Tamerlane may or may not find them tasty. I swear he’s been chomping the chives.

And now, fall descends

In many ways, I appreciate the fall gardening season even more than spring or summer. This year I haven’t succumbed to the siren call of fall bulbs. That was last year’s misstep, and I have not yet recovered from the trauma of planting tulips in November’s 40-degree (F) daytime temperatures. I just canceled the peony order (placed last April while supplies lasted), because–thanks to Tamerlane–all the veggie-herb-flower garden reconfiguration has to be rethought. But the weeds are slower; the few bloomers still a’blooming are spurts of pure joy, like the one reblooming iris that suddenly popped out with giant snowballs of flowers that I could see from my workroom window; and the bumblebees are still bobbing on the butterfly bush’s magenta lures.

Tiny aster plant covered with purple blossoms, with a tinier mushroom growing next to it

Mini-aster and mushroom sidekick, 30 Sept.

So it’s be-grateful-for-what-you-have season, wind-down-and-wait season. The garden centers are deluging me with offers of 15% off, 30% off, BOGO and by the way fall mums are in!!!–but I’m resisting. There’s enough still to do, and plenty to enjoy. I’m grateful for the Shasta daisy that decided to produce two modest blooms after being cut back, and the miniature asters are chugging out purple blossoms in such profusion I can no longer detect their foliage. They bring in every pollinator in the neighborhood, especially those fat bumblebees, and if it is possible to stagger while flying, those girls stagger away after drinking their fill of that potent aster joy juice.

I’m finding the garden a kind of joy juice for me, too, even when I’m just ripping out by their roots the spent basil plants the warthog—er, woodchuck–didn’t get to, or cutting the browned and brittle peony foliage down to the ground. I got that kind of charge late the other afternoon, and again the following morning and that evening, after too many days spent agonizing over the news, whether I read it or not. A million dead of Covid-19 worldwide, one-fifth of them here in the US; vigilante militias with guns, hopped up on lies masquerading as news on their algorithm-filtered social media; one scandal after another swallowed uncomplainingly by the party in power; horrendous unemployment, growing homelessness, spreading hunger, rampant racism and domestic violence; the unraveling of public behavior, with seemingly the entire national population living at the edge of flashpoint. Cleaning out the peony patch won’t solve any of that.

But it restores me, touching the earth does. I’m a lot smaller than the giant Antaeus of Greek myth, and not nearly as nasty, but the earth is my mother too. It’s all of ours. I wish we could remember that. Maybe we’d draw from it the strength of better kinship among all humans.

What’s your favorite part of fall in the garden?

Does time in a garden (working, or just sniffing and seeing) help you deal better with problems?

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