By Jill Williams
“October is bright as a bittersweet berry.”– Hal Borland
During this past summer’s impossibly hot and dry summer I kept reminding myself that we had one more season to look forward to. And now it’s here.
Fall’s warm days and cool nights are the best weather of the year. And it’s the real new year in terms of taking stock of the many projects that I have on the go. Am I going to finish this or can it wait until the spring?
A whole summer of selective watering finally did pay off. There was no way I could water everything so I had to pick and choose. The nasturtiums and cosmos that I kept alive through the heat and drought finally flowered well after Labour Day. I wondered very often while I was doing that if I was wasting my time.
The cucumbers and zucchini both gave up in spite of my watering them. The tomatoes fared better and they are still producing at the end of September. I covered them when we had two very light frosts and they have kept on going.
What a relief it was to finally see a couple of heavy rains in September. We could have used those in July and August but never mind. What’s done is done.
No one was more surprised than me that this year’s garlic crop was good. It wasn’t the best I’ve ever seen but it wasn’t awful either. It’s usually not very good in dry years. I did water it a few times early in the season and it looks like that was worth the effort.
Garlic planting is one of the fall jobs that I look forward to the most. It’s very satisfying to get that in the ground and know that I will be harvesting it next year. I’m not particular about when that gets done as long as it gets done before it snows.
I was glad to have the annuals in pots on the front porch since the ones in the ground flowered so late this year. It’s always worth while I think to have a few pots of annuals for the hummingbirds. I enjoyed seeing them up close coming to all the porch flowers several times a day. They have been gone for a few weeks now and it’s quieter without them.
The hummingbirds seemed to particularly like a red mandevilla that I was given last fall. I kept it inside over the winter and put it in a sheltered corner of the front porch for the summer. I had been told that I wouldn’t be able to keep it over the winter but it thrived nonetheless. I guess it didn’t know that it wasn’t supposed to do well in a colder house. It will get cut back a little and come inside once again when it gets colder. Needless to say, I enjoy the challenge of seeing what I can keep inside over the winter.
The desert garden which consists of two cacti and two succulents in pots stays outside until sometime in November. They need a cold period so that they start to bloom inside once the days start to get longer in the spring. And isn’t that are assuring thing to think about as the days get shorter and darker?
There is still, of course, ice storm clean up to try to get done before winter now that the days are cooler. The big poplars that uprooted in the storm and then were cut are trying to recreate themselves by sprouting up in the lawn. I have cut them all off twice already and am going to have to do it all again before winter. You can’t blame them for trying. That they were not all at deterred by the drought is astounding to me.
Never mind the unexpected poplar clean up; Nature always seems to come up with something I’ve never seen before and I just have to deal with it.
On the positive side I’m looking forward to both garlic planting and bulb planting. And there are still very many warm and bug free days to enjoy the front porch. It’s with much relief that I put the drought summer behind me and and enjoy what remains of the beautiful fall days.