“The gardener’s year is circular; November and December are the months that close the circle.”
Bob Thomson, The New Victory Garden
The last few flowers of the fall season are still blooming in the bed beside the west wall of the house. Here there’s bright yellow Calendula that popped up sometime in late summer. Beside it is an orange California poppy with its beautiful silver foliage. Both of these will take a lot of frost and will bloom into November. And most impressive of all is a pink giant nicotine. I grew this many years ago in that bed. The seeds of giant nicotine (N. sylvestris) last for many years in the soil. So I wasn’t too surprised to see it pop up at the end of the summer. But I was surprised to see it bloom this late and also survive many frosts.
That particular bed is, I think, a microclimate that is much warmer than the vegetable garden. This is where I planted hot peppers which were very successful this year. The pepper plants are attractive and they don’t seem to mind being mixed in with all the flowers.
One of the joys of late fall is the irresistible (to me, anyway) displays of fall bulbs at drastically reduced prices. This year I got a big bag of red single tulips and some beautiful split corona orange centred daffodils. Every spring I mark a few spots to plant daffodils. I don’t plant every year but I mark the spots just in case. This year I was looking for something other than bulbs in a certain store and not finding it. But finding the bulbs made that trip worthwhile.
This past summer was a good season for most of the vegetables as we had lots of rain. And I had the best sweet peas I have ever had after many years of trying. I’m hoping I can repeat that again next year. I learned that when all the books say that sweet peas are heavy feeders they really mean it. They stopped flowering in early September but I’m not complaining about that. I was able to cut some every day for at least two months.
It was not a good year for the glads for some reason. I had very few that actually bloomed. But I’m an eternal optimist and I will dig them all up and store them for the winter and hope that next year is better. Isn’t that the perpetual refrain of the hopeful gardener?
Glads are really easy to store and quite forgiving about temperature. I have had some of mine for years. Dahlias are more particular and I don’t think I have the right conditions to store those. I haven’t been very successful with them so far, anyway.
There is some satisfaction in having the garlic planted and the bay tree back in the house for the winter. All of the bulbs that I can’t see have already started growing for next spring. I try to keep this invisible growth in mind when I get discouraged by dark November.
Stick season, the time when the leaves are off the trees but it’s not winter yet, is not my favourite time of year. And I don’t think anyone likes the early darkness.
It’s time to rest and relax beside the fire with a good book. Seed catalogues will start arriving in December and maybe by then I will want to look at them.
By Jill Williams