{"id":169,"date":"2009-09-28T04:36:37","date_gmt":"2009-09-28T12:36:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/garden\/?p=169"},"modified":"2015-11-24T07:32:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-24T15:32:59","slug":"fall-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/fall-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"Fall Begins"},"content":{"rendered":"

FALL BEGINS
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\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fall is a time when many gardeners feel a little sad. \u00a0The gardening season is winding down, the cycle of growth has slowed and the days are shortening.\u00a0 Staying out in the garden until eight o’clock on a glorious weekend day now means that you will end up weeding in the dark.\u00a0 The supply of flowers in the beds and borders is beginning its annual decline as the early asters and anemones finish blooming.\u00a0 I already miss summer’s abundance.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 For those of us who spent the rainy summer days living vicariously through the glossy spreads in garden magazines, there is another sharp realization.\u00a0 Most of those magazines reduce their publication schedules to every other month or even less frequently during the winter.\u00a0 Unless you have a warm greenhouse or conservatory, horticultural comfort gets a lot harder to come by.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Lately, when I’ve talked to other local gardeners, I’ve heard a hint of regret that goes beyond the usual fall malaise.\u00a0 Spring and summer were gloomy this year, with rain almost every day in some weeks.\u00a0 Everything that was susceptible to fungal disease got fungal disease and it was a banner year for powdery mildew, botrytis and black spot.\u00a0 Tomatoes rotted on the vines, strawberries ripened into pink, watery blobs and ornamental plants responded to the dreary weather by cutting back on flower production.\u00a0 Everything alive yearned to see the sun.\u00a0 Of course absolutely no one had to water anything, but that was faint comfort.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So what’s to be done?\u00a0 Dwelling on lost opportunities and flowers that didn’t flourish is unproductive.\u00a0 With the exception of those occasions when gardeners say things like, “The garden looks pretty good now, but you should have seen it last week,”\u009d we are generally optimists who look ahead rather than behind.\u00a0 I am trying to adopt a Zen-like attitude and let things go–even the sad memory of all those water soaked iris and balled-up roses.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 We should all remember that the rain has finally let up and annuals, roses and other repeat blooming plants are still with us and working hard.\u00a0 I have an over zealous gaillardia that has been covering itself in golden yellow daisy-like flowers for the last two weeks.\u00a0 Mint family members like catmint and salvia are growing vigorously.\u00a0 The lemon-scented agastache that I put in earlier in the summer is showing every sign of starting another cycle of bloom.\u00a0 The purple-leafed perilla is flowering exuberantly and will soon take another step on the route to total garden domination by setting large quantities of seed. \u00a0The roses are sprouting new canes as if they have no inkling that the growing season is winding down, not gearing up.\u00a0 Right now I can still gather enough roses to make a rose bouquet without any “filler”\u009d flowers and foliage.\u00a0 This won’t continue for a month as it does in May, but it’s good enough for right now.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 And that’s the key to the whole thing–good enough for right now.\u00a0 Fall is about living in the moment in the garden.\u00a0 The silver lining in the cloud of seasonal decline is that the lawn grass and weeds have also slowed their growth, giving most gardeners a short but significant window of opportunity to relax and enjoy the scenery before the autumn leaves need raking.\u00a0 Just for today the butterflies are still here, the goldfinches are still eating the seeds from the spent coneflowers and tomatoes on indeterminate-type plants are still ripening.\u00a0 Being an optimist, I am not willing to resort to fried green tomatoes yet.\u00a0 With another month of decent weather, I can have more red ones.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 But optimistic doesn’t mean unrealistic.\u00a0 This weekend I will start bringing the vacationing houseplants inside and tucking the amaryllis in for their annual siesta in the darkest part of the cellar.\u00a0 I’ll contemplate the paperwhite offerings in the catalogs, so I am not caught flowerless during the winter.\u00a0 I have already hung up many big pink flowerheads from the peegee hydrangea, so that I will have plenty for winter arrangements.
\n\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I once heard the period prior to World War I described as Europe’s “golden afternoon.”\u009d\u00a0 Taking garden-related matters day by day in October allows me to enjoy the season’s “golden afternoon”\u009d without worrying about the winter night to come.
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FALL BEGINS \u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Fall is a time when many gardeners feel a little sad. \u00a0The gardening season is winding down, the cycle of growth has slowed and the days are shortening.\u00a0 Staying out in the garden until eight o’clock on a glorious weekend day now means that you will end up weeding in the dark.\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-169","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fall"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169","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=169"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1616,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/169\/revisions\/1616"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=169"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=169"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gardenersapprentice.com\/gardeningtips\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=169"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}