Farewell to autumn
There reigns a rusty richness everywhere;
See the last orange roses, how they blow
Deeper and heavier than in their prime,
In one defiant flame before they go;
See the red-yellow vine leaves, how they climb
In desperate tangle to the upper air;
So might a hoyden gypsy toss and throw
A scarf across her disobedient hair.
See the last zinnias, waiting for the frost,
The deadly touch, the crystals and the rime,
Intense of colour, violent, extreme,
Loud as trumpet lest a note be lost
In blackened death that nothing can redeem;
They make the most of moments that remain .....
These few days at the end of Autumn are often the most beautiful of the whole season. It’s as though every leaf is shouting, “Look at me. Look at me now before it’s too late!”
And so I do. I sit in the sunroom and marvel at all the different yellows of the walnut leaves which vary from translucent yellow to the richest gold.
The pyracantha on the other hand has gold, green, yellow, orange and red leaves, sometimes all on a single branch. I would never put orange and red next to each other in the garden but Mother Nature doesn’t hesitate. And it’s stunning.
It makes me wonder why I bother designing, selecting, deciding which plant goes where, next to what, with this or that bloom.
Why not have only an autumn garden and leave it all up to Mother Nature when the end result is so far superior to anything I can imagine.
I wander around the garden astounded at the beauty of it all and when the sun happens to grace the mahogany leaves of the Japanese Maple I stand transfixed as though I were gazing at the Holy Grail.
And yet here I am on my knees digging 35 holes six inches deep and dropping in Vanilla Peach daffodil bulbs.
Because I have a vision. I can see this flower bed in six months’ time when the striped green and ivory leaves of Iris pallida Variegata are standing tall in front of the Golden Ninebark which will just be sprouting tiny yellow leaves.
On either side and a little in front of the Ninebark are two euphorbias that will be smothered in dense, flattened, golden-yellow blossoms and in between them will be these delicious daffodils. Their soft vanilla blooms will echo all the other yellows in the border while each peachy-pink, ruffled trumpet will herald the beginning of a new season.
That’s what gardeners do isn’t it? We dream, we work hard to put everything into place, and then we wait. It doesn’t always turn out exactly as we plan of course.
It took me years to learn why all the tulips and daffodils I planted hardly ever returned after their first year. They require good drainage or they will rot and my garden is mostly heavy clay soil.
They also need to be fed well after they have finished blooming when the leaves are gathering nutrients for the following year.
I’ve also learned not to expect the fancier flowers to last more than a couple of years even in the one border that has sandy soil.
I once invested in some gorgeous apricot parrot tulips believing that they were like perennials and would return for years to come. They lasted two years then disappeared.
Now I look to see if the word “naturalizing” is in the description and if so they should live for many years.
In fact they may be hard to get rid of. Which is what happened when I ordered 120 pale pink single tulips that were to go in the narrow bed under the sunroom windows.
I measured the area carefully, calculated how many tulips would make a good display and chose a pastel colour I felt would go well with the lavender that shared the bed.
I knew that lavender didn’t require a lot of water and the soil in that area was a bit sandy so I hoped they wouldn’t rot too quickly. And I was right. They have returned every spring for years.
Unfortunately when they bloomed they were not pale pink but bubblegum pink, a colour that really sets my teeth on edge.
I have tried tucking in a few Angelique tulips to tone down the brightness but it hasn’t really helped and I have absolutely no intention of trying to dig up a hundred and twenty tulip bulbs.
I could rip out all the foliage before they bloom which would eventually kill the bulbs but they have one redeeming quality that stays my hand; they look absolutely fabulous in amongst a bouquet of lilacs which bloom at the same time.
Planting bulbs can be quite satisfying when the end result comes close to the original vision, but for me the real purpose is so that come Spring I will have played some small part in Nature’s eternal cycle.
Every season in the gardening year affords me a tangible connection to this mystery. Now, with autumn nearly gone and winter set to arrive any minute, I respond by walking through my garden to see that every vulnerable plant has been thoroughly watered and mulched.
Others that I wish to save have been potted up and brought inside to spend the winter in the cellar under fluorescent lights.
This year there are the usual geraniums, plus several euphorbia Diamond Frost that apparently do well as houseplants.
I’ve also taken cuttings from the euphorbias which I’m rooting in water on my kitchen counter and as soon as they have grown a substantial number of roots I’ll pot them up and then transfer them to the cellar as well.
Also this year I’m trying cuttings from a particularly lovely coleus. So far they seem to be doing well.
Yesterday when I was throwing a thick cloth over the chard in the kitchen garden in hopes of keeping it alive for a few more weeks I noticed about 10 small heads of butter lettuce that had obviously been seeded too late and were not going to survive the coming frost.
So I potted them up and brought them into the kitchen where I have a tiny fluorescent light under one of the cabinets.
I’ve never grown lettuce to maturity inside. Will they have good lettuce flavour? Will the light from the window and the fluorescent be enough?
I have no idea. It doesn’t really matter.
As May Sarton once wrote, “A garden is always a series of losses set against a few triumphs, like life itself.”
Audrey Anderson is a gardener, writer and painter who resides in Naramata.