When I am alone in my garden in November I often think about music, especially Ralph Vaughn Williams’ elegiac settings of English folk tunes.\u00a0 My favorite is the haunting “Fantasia on Greensleeves,”\u009d because the musical images just seem right for the season of chilly winds, early sunsets and mornings when the grass glistens with frost.\u00a0 “Greensleeves”\u009d is about memories, and on the surface the garden has become a repository of memories.\u00a0 Rose hips remind me of all the summer flowers, the piles of brilliant fallen maple leaves take me back to the spring day when I first noticed that the trees were leafing out.\u00a0 The abundant seed pods on the roses of Sharon make me think fondly about how well those shrubs performed this year.<\/p>\n
But as I go about the business of planting the last bulbs, raking away the leaves and tidying up, I am struck by the vibrancy all around me.\u00a0 October was wet, and the plants, so parched all summer, have responded vigorously.\u00a0 The columbines, for example, are as fresh and green as they were in May–maybe more so.\u00a0 The scented geraniums are huge.\u00a0 The rosettes on the first-year foxgloves are enormous, and I am positive that they weren’t that way last month.\u00a0 ‘L.D. Braithwaite’, a red rose that I just installed last July, has four big blooms.\u00a0 Many of the other roses are sporting new reddish leaves.\u00a0 ‘Ghislaine de Feligonde’, an old-fashioned shrub rose, has been so busy sprouting new canes that she has not even paused to acknowledge the cooler temperatures.\u00a0 Even as I prune back the butterfly bushes, I see that they are sending out new growth.\u00a0 Tiny larkspur seedlings are coming up all over the back garden, and in front, the pulmonaria are plump and apple green.\u00a0 A few honeysuckle bloom on the old arbor.\u00a0 The big potted canna that sulked all summer like a petulant thirteen-year-old has a flower bud, and the barberry bushes have grown to an indecent size.\u00a0 Even Sarah, the charcoal-gray cat, who has been somnolent for months, is racing around the garden as if she has a firecracker tied to her tail.<\/p>\n
So I rake carefully to keep from disturbing the tiny larkspur.\u00a0 I weed.\u00a0 I stifle the urge to defy the season and divide the overgrown ‘Autumn Joy’ sedum.\u00a0 When I see a blossom on any plant, I leave it there or clip it for an indoor bouquet.\u00a0 I don’t worry about the new growth on the roses because I have a sense that the roses know what they are doing.<\/p>\n
Of course much of this growth and greenness will come to an end when the hard frosts come in the next few weeks.\u00a0 The still-blooming tuberous begonias will turn black in the cold and the exuberant nasturtiums will die.\u00a0 The cooling soil will turn even colder. Right now, though, it is a joy to be outside because there is so much life under every dead leaf.<\/p>\n
I used to think that the best way to get through late fall in the garden was to focus on great expectations and dream about next spring.\u00a0 After all, those bulbs sleeping under the soil are like debutants, indulging in a long bout of beauty rest before the big horticultural coming-out party next spring.\u00a0 Since the party was already arranged, it was easy to dismiss November as a collection of depressing days with nothing to look at except bare branches, wet streets and dead leaves.\u00a0 But now I know better, and my greatest pleasure comes from watching the abundant life and changing scene every day in my beds and borders.\u00a0 Waiting and hoping are good and necessary, but celebrating the here-and-now is even more important, especially as winter looms large on the horizon. You can’t be fully human unless you can see that old age is, in its own way, as vibrant, beautiful and interesting as youth.\u00a0 You can’t be a real gardener until you can celebrate November.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
When I am alone in my garden in November I often think about music, especially Ralph Vaughn Williams’ elegiac settings of English folk tunes.\u00a0 My favorite is the haunting “Fantasia on Greensleeves,”\u009d because the musical images just seem right for the season of chilly winds, early sunsets and mornings when the grass glistens with frost.\u00a0 … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1761,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11\/revisions\/1761"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}