The Melancholy Loveliness of Late-Fall Gardening

iridescent green bee on wild mint

Yesterday we heard the song of the white-throated sparrow for the first time this fall. The sparrow winters in the south and breeds in the north. The first time I heard its call was in a coniferous forest of northern Minnesota; its song was one of the most beautiful things I had ever heard, coming as it did, waveringly, through trees that had not yet become familiar to this daughter of southern pines and Gulf Coastal grasses. Its melody conveyed a hint of cool Arctic air, spicy scent of balsam fir, and a sense of melancholy. I never forgot it. Now, here in southeastern Louisiana, I look forward to this memory of Minnesota made flesh in the flash of a winged shadow in the bushy edges of our yard and in the song that intimates to me presences loved and lost.

The white-throated sparrow arrived with unusually early cold weather. Temperatures dipped to 32°F where we live and broke record lows in towns nearby; the average low for this time of year is 53°F. Fearing frost, I had spent the previous afternoon cutting lemongrass leaves to dry for tea--a task I had promised to do for my daughter who is living in Wyoming--gathering what I thought might be my final bouquet of zinnias for the year, making room for cold sensitive plants in our sunroom, and covering the plants I could not bring inside. We had no frost, however, so the lemongrass still lives for another harvest or two, but our sunroom remains filled with the plants of semi-tropical climates: a pink-flowering bougainvillea, poinsettias, ginger, a red-flowering geranium, a Buddha's hand citrus, and a couple of reed palms.

Our gardens, the larger vegetable garden and the smaller flower and herb beds around our yard, are full of late-fall blooms and ready-to-eat tender greens. In late summer, I cleared away the crusty remains of the zinnias of summer to make way for re-seeded plants, which are shorter and more attenuated than their summer parents but covered with flowers. They began blooming in time for the early fall arrival of gulf fritillaries, painted ladies, yellow sulphurs, and a few swallowtails. In the northeastern corner of our yard, I had allowed native fall aster to spread and grow throughout the summer and have been rewarded not only by a profusion of blooms in plants that can be head-high, but also by the hundreds of bees that busily collect pollen as the shadows of a nearby bamboo hedge retreat during the day. The bees are so besotted with this wild bouquet that they have almost abandoned my cultivated blooms.

partial view of the fall aster patch on an October morning

Paying closer attention to pollinators as I have the past two years, I have noted what plants seem to attract the most bees and other pollinators. The fall asters have attracted several different kinds of bees and wasps, while in a nearby patch of tiny wild mint, I can always spy an iridescent green bee or two flitting from one minuscule bloom to another. These little bees are difficult to photograph, as they seem very wary and fly very quickly in a zigzag pattern. I have noted several sizes of bumblebees; some very large bumbly-type bees love the big yellow luffa flowers. One morning I ventured into the aster patch while it was still in shade, and I discovered dozens of very tiny bumblebees hanging from the blooms and branches where they had over-nighted and were waiting for the sun to warm their wings so they could begin their daily work.

another view of a wary green bee

tiny bee on a fall aster bloom

closer look at the wild mint, to illustrate its size in relation to my fingers

Some wasps are pollinators, too.

black bee-like fly

a hornet-like pollinator

We are already enjoying salads of mesclun and tender mustards from the larger garden and also from the herb beds where I planted seeds of dill, arugula, and mixed greens in late September. The last few weeks have been dry, so I had to water the tender sprouts as they emerged. The habanero peppers, ghost peppers, and green peppers are still bearing, and the luffa fruit are huge. We are a little worried, however, that the luffa will not develop into the dry, spongy product one associates with bath time. The fruits are still green and soft. My gourd crop has been disappointing; too many gourds dropped from the vines and rotted in the hot humid weather of southeastern Louisiana.

a luffa fruit

foreground, arugula, mixed greens among the remains of summer's basil; background, flowering Mexican tarragon

Although temperatures are warmer today, we will have cooler weather again, and pollinators will die or hibernate, some maybe venturing out occasionally during milder winter weather. This morning I heard the song of the white-throated sparrow again as I watched the sun rise above the pines. It will keep me company through the late-fall and winter as leaves fall and flowers fade.

one harvested row of this year's sweet potatoes

second harvested row of this year's sweet potatoes

The September Garden

habanero peppers

This morning under an overcast sky, the temperature hovers around the mid-70s Fahrenheit. After two or three weeks of neglecting the garden, I ventured out in the early morning while the dew was still on the grass and weeded two of my 8ftX8ft raised herb beds. Although rain has been predicted for today (80% chance), only a few sprinkles fell this morning, and while the soil still has moisture in it a few inches under the surface, we have had a rather dry September. The seed Tom planted in the big vegetable garden a couple of weeks ago has failed to sprout except for one or two little plants. Tom didn't water the seed when he planted it, thinking that rain would soon do the job. Onions are up, however.

The soil in my herb beds is also depleted of nutrients. We scattered some commercial fertilizer across the surface, but that's just a stop-gap measure. I need to add compost to the soil if I want to have a successful fall/winter garden.

The late summer and early fall heat has not been the only thing discouraging me from active gardening. As I have aged, my allergies have become worse, especially in the late summer and fall, and my inner ears are especially affected. Sometimes, as soon as I walk outside, my ears begin to fill with fluid, in an allergic reaction to something in the atmosphere: rag weed? cedar elm? I don't know. It's time for another re-fill of the medication my doctor prescribed, though. Meanwhile, I do what I can, and this morning cooler weather encouraged me to ignore my allergies and spend an hour or so in the garden weeding.

Our daughter grew the poinsettias in a greenhouse class, and I've managed to keep them alive for two years.

The gourd vines are still green, and luffa vines are spreading across the lawn of our north lot. This morning, bees were busy gathering pollen from the luffa blooms; I noted at least four different kinds of bees. The peppers are still bearing, especially the habaneros and the ghost peppers. While the sweet potato vines are growing and spreading, they have been infiltrated by that scourge of the southern garden, Phyllanthus urinaria, and some luffa vines have spread through the potatoes to grasp at the pepper plants. We will have a lot of cleaning up to do after we dig our sweet potatoes.

Luffa vines escaping from the garden trellis

vegetable garden, north lot (far background, bamboo planted by previous owner)

Spider lilies are beginning to bloom.

These are the herb beds I weeded this morning. I left some of summer's basil, purslane, and bronze fennel. The fennel probably would have done better in the fall here.

Mist flower and swamp sunflowers are beginning to bloom (zinnias have re-seeded).

more spider lilies blooming near the spearmint.

Spider lilies coming up in the lawn.

ghost peppers--hot, hot, hot!

The Bees are Back

In mid-February the camellia at the northwest corner of our house began to bloom, and as soon as the last polar vortex swept through and the weather began to warm, honey bees were on the flowers. Yesterday I saw bumblebees for the first time this year; two or three bumblebees having joined the honeybees in gathering pollen from the mustard flowers in our large vegetable garden. They should be enjoying the white clover that is beginning to bloom, too. Clover has spread in large patches throughout the east and north sides of our property, and I usually mow around most of it, leaving flowers for bees and the tender leaves for rabbits. This weekend I found two four-leaf clovers, plucked them, and placed them to dry in a paperback copy of Michael Pollan's book The Botany of Desire. Last year I found twenty or so four-leaf clovers over the course of the spring and early summer.

With highs in the 70s (Fahrenheit) this past week, I was tempted to begin spring gardening, so I took out a couple of packets of nasturtium seed. The directions advise to wait until all danger of frost is past...and another cold front is heading across the country, with a low in the thirties predicted here for Monday night. Will it frost? I don't know. But I planted some nasturtium seeds anyway in flower pots on my patio. I suspect that they will be fine.

The red salvia and blue-gray salvia have sprouted and are leafing out, violets are blooming, johnny jump-ups that reseeded from last year are blooming, and the tender green shoots of bulbs are beginning to poke above ground. We are waiting to see how devastating the freezes have been to our citrus trees, banana trees, lemongrass, and variegated ginger. None of these plants are showing signs of life yet. The white-flowering althea in our back yard is shyly showing a bit of green, unaware of the cold weather still in store for us.

We are still pulling carrots and turnips from the winter vegetable garden; green shallots are flourishing, but the purple mustard greens and other winter greens have been afflicted with tiny bugs. Tom transplanted leeks in the vegetable garden; they seem to be very slow-growing plants. All his habanero, serano, ghost peppers, and tomatillos have sprouted in their temporary containers. He thinned tomato sprouts yesterday, moving some of the extra sprouts to another container for a friend.

The ground remains too wet to do much weed-clearing in the flower beds. Tom dug a hole yesterday in which to plant a live oak sprout, and the clay bottom of the hole quickly gathered water. He emptied the rain gauge and noted that it measured 2.85 inches of water from the last week-and-a-half, and we're expecting more rain this week. Soon, however, temperatures will begin to rise quickly. I hope we'll get a few dry days in a row so that I can have everything ready for some serious planting.

Time to finalize my summer garden plans.

First Notes of January

January 2014

The last time I posted an entry on my blog, bees were still visiting my herbs and flowers. Now we're already almost two weeks into the new year, and the polar vortex that covered so much of the northern and eastern parts of the country left its print on southeast Louisiana as well. For two nights, temperatures plummeted into the teens. We covered our citrus and fig trees with blankets, old tablecloths and sheets to keep them from freezing. The banana trees will have to come back from the roots. Last night's rain has created a soggy mess in our yard and gardens. I went out this afternoon for a few minutes to note that the small dill plants that had sprouted earlier in the season are droopy but still living, and much of my flower and herb beds are covered with winter weeds.

This is a dispiriting time of the year in our area. Even when the weather is temperate, such as it was today, soggy ground prevents one from clearing out weeds and debris in the gardens. It's difficult to imagine how beautiful and green the gardens will be in the spring, but this is the time for that kind of dreaming.  Gardening catalogues get me through January. By late February, I should be out in the garden preparing for spring.

Meanwhile, we are excited to have had frogs move into the little pond near our patio. This is a pond that previously had been in a half-whiskey barrel on the patio. We took out the plastic liner and dug a hole for it in the bed near the patio, so now that it's at ground level it's within hopping reach of frogs. The chirping of the frogs brighten these dull January days. Today I managed, after several tries, to get the song of the frogs on video. Just as I would sneak up to turn on the camera, the frogs would be startled and become silent, but I placed the camera on a windowsill in the house, overlooking the patio, and took this video through the glass (and not so clean) window. However, Tom the federal worker is not convinced that these are our pond frogs calling. They might be tree frogs near the house. (Note: The frogs calling are spring peepers, not the ones that are in our patio pond.)


Our cat, Persephone, spends much of the winter days lounging in the house. "Talk to the paw," she says in the photo below.

Easter Parade

We drove to Kennesaw Mountain early Sunday afternoon to enjoy the first full day of sunshine we've had in days. The weather was clear and cool, in the upper 60s or low 70s. Kennesaw Mountain is the location of a Civil War Battlefield, one of the battles to prevent Sherman from marching on Atlanta--which ultimately failed. The Confederates won the battle but lost the war. The older I get, the less I have any inclination to romanticize war; in fact, that inclination is about out of my system altogether now. Over 5,000 young men, Union and Confederate, lost their lives at the Battle of Kennesaw Mountain. An open grassy field near the Visitor's Center commemorates the bones of the slain that lie there underneath the soil. Signs warn visitors to neither picnic nor fly kites on the area.

Inside the Visitor's Center is a small museum with a few items of the times, dioramas of cut-outs of men associated with the Civil War and the battles in the Atlanta area, and lots of words describing the Civil War and the battles. Again, I'm a daughter of the South, but I don't have any romantic notions about the Civil War or about the plantation culture that enslaved millions of blacks. And anyone who does should ingest this bit of information I gleaned from our quick turn in the Kennesaw Mountain Museum: local slave owners "loaned" their slaves to the Confederate Army to dig battle entrenchments and to do other labor associated with the war. The slave owners received $25 a month per slave; soldiers made $18 a month. War is ever the same, isn't it? The rich get richer (for the slaves didn't get that money; their white masters profited) while young men die.

Smelling the stench of blood even through this distance of time, we quickly exited the museum to walk up Kennesaw Mountain. The day was glorious, but, unfortunately, I still had a lingering head cold from my bout with flu, and I'm sure allergies added to my misery, too. The walk up the sometimes steep trail was a little wearing on someone who hadn't gotten any exercise recently. But we made it to the top, past the display cannons set behind the remains of the battle mounds dug by Confederate soldiers. Kennesaw Mountain was a popular destination on that Easter Sunday. I don't think I've ever seen so many people and their dogs on a woody walking trail. When we left the park a little after 3 p.m., vehicles were bumper to bumper at the entrance.

This is not a trail for people who crave silence. During the Civil War, Kennesaw Mountain was surrounded by plowed fields and farms; today it's surrounded by business districts with metal warehouses and heavily populated suburban areas. We listened for birdsong above the constant chatter of visitors and heard Eastern Phoebes, Cardinals, Pileated Woodpeckers, and Rufous-Sided Towhees. But mostly we heard people. It was an Easter Parade of urban and suburban dwellers longing for the outdoors and making their way to the nearest woods to celebrate spring and a day of sunshine.

Freaky? Well, Unusual Weather

Tom just e-mailed me to let me know that it is snowing in Mid-town Atlanta. I think we must have been still stuck in our experiences of Central Texas weather when we began planting our Victory Garden this year! Tom did have the foresight to cover most of those plants last night (he was feeling a lot better than I at the time). So far, no sign of snow here where we are, just east of Atlanta.

UPDATE: Okay, it's 12:12 p.m., on April 7th, and it's snowing here. Tiny, tiny, flakes of snow, to be sure--the wind is blowing strongly and bitingly, too. But snowing, briefly.

Update, 2:30 p.m.: According to weather.com, the temperature here is 44 degrees, but it feels much cooler. I walked outside to take a few pictures of blooms, hoping that those blooms won't freeze tonight. The apple tree we planted just a couple of months ago is blooming, and the native flowers I have planted in the backyard are blooming, too. M-M's strawberry plants are blooming, and she is so looking forward to those first tasty strawberries. The last frost date for this area is around April 10th, but according to one local blog, the last April freeze in Atlanta was in 2000, and before that, 1992. Weather.com is predicting a low of 32 degrees tonight.

My brief foray into the cold led to an encounter with a neighbor two streets over--Pam--who approached while I was photographing the apple blossoms. One of our neighbors keeps a few children in her home, and Pam's child is one of those. Our front yard has been of interest to the children because we are growing things, and children love to watch things grow. Also, my art car captures attention when it's parked in the driveway. Pam mentioned that she and her child enjoyed looking at it. Right now The Lady is parked in our small garage in the backyard. When the weather warms up (again!), I plan to spruce up The Lady and perhaps drive her in a few more parades before trying to find someone who would like to re-invent The Lady for his or her own art car adventures.

Trees full of Birds

On the first day of spring, Tom and I sat in our backyard looking up into the branches of trees arching far above us. The trees were full of birds. Two red-bellied woodpeckers danced around the trunk of the sweetgum tree. They circled the trunk again and again, one leading the way, bobbing its head, the other following. Last year we enjoyed the red-headed woodpecker that nested in a hole high above our neighbor's yard; we saw one there yesterday, as well. Robins hunted for insects in the front lawns, and bluebirds flew from yard to yard looking for a nesting place. Cedar waxwings have been migrating through here, too, remaining in the tops of trees; their high-pitched trill, however, gives them away. I always hear cedar waxwings long before I see them. They are a sleek, pretty crested bird with a black mask and yellow-tipped tail. I've heard their high-pitched buzz in Waverly Hall, Georgia, and in Central Texas, where they descend in flocks to feast on juniper berries.

Later that evening, while M-M was entertaining friends in the house, Tom and I ate dinner on the patio in the waning light. I lit candles around the table, and we sat in the dark drinking wine and eating pan-seared salmon, beets, red potatoes, and stir-fried bok-choy and beet greens. Across the suburban lawns, probably near the creek where we had heard it earlier and closer, a barred owl hooted. How I love to hear that call here in our 1940s metro-Atlanta suburb. That call carries me back to so many places, but most memorably to Old River, Texas, where I lived as a child, where six generations of Dugats had lived. Woods surrounded our home of eight acres, and owls hooted often, calling across woods in which my father had hunted as a young man.

Sometimes late at night, really in the early morning, while everyone in our house is asleep but me, that owl, or one like it, calls loudly in the trees near our yard. I open our front door and step outside. The street is dimly lit by street lights; the houses are dark. I wait, hoping for one last call. It's how I imagine myself at the end of my life--waiting, listening for that last call, the hoot of a barred owl or the tremolo of a screech owl, maybe the haunting call of a loon--some bird calling me in the waning light to whatever is beyond this flesh.

But now the birds are calling us into another spring. Some cultures celebrate their new year in the vernal (or March) equinox, "Nowruz" in the Afghan and Iranian calendars. (This week, one of my colleagues, originally from Iran, brought traditional Iranian sweets to work for us to share.) Makes sense. To a new leaf, a new beginning.

Spring

Spring has not officially arrived, but the weather this week has been very spring-like, more like central Texas than north-central Georgia, with temperatures in the high-70s and low-80s. I'm on spring break, a week's vacation from tutoring part-time, and have spent the first part of the week gardening. So I'm especially attuned to the natural world this week and to all that we do to make it conform to our needs and expectations.

Having this extra time at home has provided me with more opportunities to pay attention to nature in a suburban setting. One morning, I spied a hawk swooping out of the sky to perch on a neighbor's metal fence. It sat there, looking into the shady backyard where a small dog lives, but swiveled its head to watch me warily as I approached from across the street. This hawk must have a nest nearby, for I saw it again a couple of days later, flying up from a perch in another neighbor's yard to circle and drift above the sweetgum and black locust. In fact, this is probably the hawk I've written about previously, the one my daughter observed catching a small mammal.

Yesterday while I was turning over the soil in our garden to mix in the compost, one neighbor who has a home childcare business came across the street with the entire troop, about six young children. They were on a short expedition to look for signs of spring. I was part of the afternoon's exhibit, an example of spring: someone preparing a garden. My neighbor asked the children to guess what I might be planting; most of them guessed daffodils. That is, one boy answered "daffodils," and every child after him gave the same answer. I told them that, yes, I was planting flowers (not daffodils--those will be planted this fall if I prepare the ground in time), herbs, and vegetables.

Earlier today, I spied violets blooming in our backyard, a sure sign of spring to me and a remembrance. Images of violets always bring to my mind a particular place and a certain feeling. The place is my best friend's former home, located in Denham Springs, Louisiana. Chris's shady yard was always covered with violets in the spring; I had never seen so many violets in one place, unexpected jewels on a carpet of pine needles. I will always associate violets with the early days of our friendship, with the excitement that accompanies every new relationship: the joy of discovering a kindred spirit, the exultant hope of future shared experiences. Somewhere, probably in a journal I kept at the time, there is a recipe for Chris's violet jelly. Now Chris (Christine) lives far away from Louisiana, in northern California, a home I have yet to visit. But this memory and its attendant emotions--faded but still felt in the very core of my being--remind me of the promise of every spring, of every friendship, of every distant but unforgotten love.

One Fall Afternoon

This afternoon we strolled a little over a mile to a neighborhood festival, one we had attended for the first time last year, just a couple of months after moving here. I haven't been feeling well and won't feel well until I get another tube inserted in my right ear. The world seems muffled, distant, and subdued. So at first it seemed to me as if my ill-health were affecting my experience at the festival. However, even one of the vendors observed to us that the atmosphere was subdued, not "as crazy" and lively as last year. Last year, I drove my art car in the parade. This year the parade was very short and consisted mainly of fire trucks, community groups, and politicians. No high school bands. No women dressed up in costume (except for the Red Hat Ladies), no art car. As these pictures illustrate , however, we did see people in costume lurking among the vending tents. (Click on photo for an enlarged view.)

Nothing illustrates the subdued atmosphere so much as the two pictures below. I took the first picture of this vendor last year at the festival. The artist didn't really want me to take her picture, but I cajoled her into letting me do so, and I took a couple of photographs. She was very vivacious, and we talked for a while. This year I didn't speak with her, but as we passed her tent, we noticed that her lovely handmade hats were a little less crazy this year--lovely but less flamboyant. She herself seemed sad, lonely. I wish I had talked with her, but I wasn't well. Also, I get tired of asking people to speak louder. Until I have this Eustachian tube blockage taken care of, I prefer talking intimately with people where I can lean in close and won't be distracted by extraneous noise.

When we walked up to the edge of the festival, we first noticed a vending area with tiny clothes hung around the white fabric of the canvas pavilion top. Beside the tent was a large machine of fluffy polyester stuffing. Someone was holding a plush bear up to a pipe hooked up to this machine and--this shows how my mind was working--it seemed to me as if all the stuffing from the bear were being sucked into the machine with its clear, bear-shaped window. "Is this where plush toys go when they die?" I wondered. "Someone sucks out all their stuffing, and their flattened bodies are turned to other uses?"
Silly me. Children would be appalled by such an idea, and here they were happily gathered around this vendor with whom I talked later. The vendor and her husband are hired for birthday parties. They bring their flat plush toys, and the birthday party participants choose a toy and then have the toy filled with the polyester stuffing. The machine injects the stuffing in the toy. Then the kid gets to choose an outfit for the now-happily-plump plush animal.

As we were walking away from the vendor's tent, I noticed a pale green crocheted table cloth on a table under the tent. I stroked the cloth and asked, "Did you crochet this?"

"No, my husband's grandmother did." She stroked her belly and added, "She has crocheted several blankets for our baby."

"I crochet, too," I said, "and my grandmother crocheted baby blankets for my children. I still have the blankets, but the babies are now grown," and I motioned toward Mary-Margaret.

The most memorable sight of the afternoon was a garden we passed on our walk to the festival. I've walked by this garden a number of times but today stopped to take a few pictures of the funky art scattered among the herbs and flowers.

A kitty came out to greet us, and we stopped to communicate.

Despite my ill health, the afternoon was pleasant. We finally received close to two inches of rain earlier this week after a month of dry weather, so the fall foliage has perked up. It's really been a lovely day.

The Small Pleasures of Fall

The Autumnal Equinox is on Monday, September 22, but this evening, I looked closely for signs of fall in the bushes along the track where my husband runs while I walk. With camera in hand, I walked at a much slower pace than usual, stopping to catch the tiny flashes of color in the lush vines that covered a fence around the track.

Fall has always been my favorite time of year. Although spring is lovely, too, my heart belongs to fall, to its spirited effervescence in the face of death and decay. Fall is a season for philosophy. It reminds us of the shortness of life, of the transience of all things. This is a useful reminder.