Autumn Beginnings

Fall is a time of leave-takings, it’s true.  They start right away in late September, with whiffs of the last blackberries fermenting on the vine, so strong sometimes when I ride by a thick, unpicked patch that I think there must be a winery nearby. Mid-October, we grieve the last apple from the tree and hope for one last goldfinch sighting.  The farmer cuts the last of the snapdragons down to the ground.  We watch the forecast and speculate which wind, rain or frost will take the last of dahlias.  A few flox and bee balm blooms persist, surprisingly.  Some may flower into December, but their days are a numbered few and they look like what you’d expect to see if you looked up “bedraggled” in the illustrated dictionary.  And of course there is the great unleaving itself,creating drifts on the roadside and covering the trails in the nearby forest that wend through groves of Maple trees.  We chop up the leaves from the Maple near the garden for mulch, using it to put the beds to bed for the winter.  

But the garden has taught me that in this season of loss there are also many things starting up or progressing or persevering.   A handful of garden volunteers have sprouted, including some sweet peas.  If the winter isn’t too harsh they will be ready to take off with the spring and be many weeks ahead of their February-sown brethren.  The October sown cover crop in the pumpkin pen is now a carpet of green, millimetering along. The narcissus bulbs we planted are not completely dormant – their root systems will develop through the winter.  It’s the same for the garlic that went in late last month, doing the groundwork for an early spring appearance.  The snapdragons are considered “tender perennials”.  The ones we cut are starting up again and stand a good chance of surviving the winter.  We may have lost the goldfinches until March, but the chickadees and sparrows will stay and will keep quarreling over the bird feeder.  The branches of the Maple and Indian Plum are not nearly the dour bare ruin’d choirs they appear to be.  The twigs sport plump, chili red buds, each a tightly furled leaf waiting for its spring cue.

The farmer is in a regenerative mode.  She pours over the bulb and seed catalogues, swapping ideas with Cheryl, both of them plotting and planning.  She recites the Dahlia varieties they are considering, long lists of exotic and enticing names.  She sets up cloches for the overwintering vegetables, divides and distributes the landscape grasses.  In their third year, the dahlias attain mega-bulb status.  She digs them up and stores them in the shed.  Come spring, she’ll divide them up, some going back to Slippery Slope’s flower beds and most given away.  Her recent discovery of the milk jug greenhouse concept has prompted a flurry of activity.   Now there are about 30 jugs – collected from local coffee stands – around the house being prepared for December and January garden deployment.  She says she is planning for 50.  Her fall refrain: “so many things to start, I have to quit my day job!”