On autumn's first day, my red-haired grandson and an orange pansy remind me to celebrate all of nature's colors

September 2012

A few impetuous garden musings on this first day of autumn:

Last weekend, my husband, Lee, and I decided to take a walk around our neighborhood after dinner. When we reached our house again, Lee pointed to a patch of pansies someone had recently planted in our front garden, near the sidewalk. The pansy flowers were orange. For too many years, I refused to plant orange flowers in my gardens. Passersby could see red, blue, purple and yellow blooms in my beds, but, until recently, I enforced a heavy ban on orange petals. I joked about this prejudice, and even wrote about it in this column several times.

My intolerance became painfully apparent to me when my five-year-old grandson, a redhead, asked why I didn’t grow any flowers that were the same color as his hair. The uncertainty in his sweet face hurt my heart. Finally I saw the message I might be sending: that some flowers – or, much worse, some people – are less worthy than others, because of their color. The next time Joshy visited, I showed him the huge orange poppies growing in our backyard. (Before I mentally smacked myself upside the head, I had actually thought about digging them up and composting them.) I also told him about the orange tulips I had planted last fall, and how bright and sunny they looked in our front garden this spring. He beamed, as only children can.

Buying a red-flowering rosebush or a blue delphinium is nearly automatic for me, after decades of filling my gardens with shades of these colors. I still have to remind myself to add orange and bronze and russet flowers to my beds, but the choice is much easier now. Each time I pass my newly planted, tiered garden bed, ablaze with autumn shades of flowers, I’m thankful for the entire color palette.

When we saw that orange pansy in our garden, I knew that neither Lee nor I had planted it. Orange is not a typical color for pansies; they tend to have purple, yellow, blue or rose petals. So whoever my mystery guest gardener was, he or she knew about my dubious history with orange flowers and decided to tweak me, with humor and kindness. Seeing that perky little pansy, center stage in the garden bed, made me smile and then laugh with delight. I’m taking good care of it, keeping it watered and telling it daily that it’s looking fine. Actually, it’s beautiful. The color of its petals reminds me of my grandson’s hair and my own clearer vision.

Benjamin BadKitten, my garden staff member, humiliated himself last week. He caught a mouse…trap. I went out to the patio one morning and saw, near the back door, a white plastic contraption, with small, furry gray feet and a tail hanging out. Benjamin was parading around, weaving his tail through my legs and trying to look like the intrepid hunter that he is not. “Really?” I asked him. “You’re actually proud of catching an already-dead mouse that’s still in its trap?” My cat flattened his ears and stalked off, obviously disgusted with my utter inability to recognize his killer instinct.

Our grandsons, Joshy and three-year-old Henry, and their mom and dad (our daughter and son-in-law) are living with us for awhile. (The day they moved in seemed like an early Thanksgiving to us.) Joshy has started kindergarten here in Moscow, and a recent assignment was to draw a picture of a plant in his yard. He, Henry and I took a slow, careful tour around the vegetable and flower beds in our side yard, so that Joshy could make his artistic choice.

The two little boys stopped to study the bees perched on a purple aster in the tiered bed. They also considered the orange and dark red chrysanthemums in the same bed, but decided to move on to the artichoke plants. A bright purple flower grew from the center of each of the artichokes, because I had let them go to seed. Joshy and Henry climbed onto the edge of the wooden bed so they could peer into a plant whose purple flower was just emerging. They checked it out, fascinated to see the tiny petals – and the bees hovering on a bigger flower nearby. I was sure my favorite kindergartener had found his still life – but then the boys spotted the pumpkin patch. I am growing “Cinderella” pumpkins for each of them, and they spent some time debating which pumpkin was whose. They called dibs on the two biggest pumpkins – “biggest” being relative, of course. My pumpkins aren’t exactly county fair quality.

Then they chose a small, round pumpkin for their baby sister, who will be born in mid-December. Halloween will be over by then, but holidays are big at our house. So maybe we’ll display her pumpkin near a Christmas wreath on the front porch after she’s born. Joshy decided to draw his pumpkin, with its grooved ridges, orange body, green vine and leaves. His picture is a masterpiece, of course.

September is time to look back on gardening season

September 2012

These September mornings have a wee nip in the air now. I check the weather forecast for projected low temperatures, in case my tomatoes are in danger of frost. For the first time since June, I have needed a light jacket for my daily walks. Soon, in our shortest, most glorious season, the maples and oaks will blaze in autumn colors before their leaves fall in great drifts over our lawns. The wide Idaho sky will turn a deep blue that seems to appear only in the fall. Smoke will start curling from neighborhood chimneys, and I will be baking bread and simmering Italian stews and soups again.

 

In January, when seed catalogs teeter in stacks on my reading table, I weave my fantasies for the coming spring. But September is the time when I look back on another season in the garden. Soon I will be outside, finishing my annual ritual of what I have always called taking down the garden. I will do a final dead-heading of the still-blooming roses, cut the remaining perennial stalks to the ground, and plant spring-flowering bulbs in new spots. Then I’ll tuck everybody in for the winter months under a blanket of WSU compost, the finest mulching compost I’ve found in many years of gardening.

My flower gardens were the stars of my gardening efforts this year. Delphiniums, roses, phlox, verbascum, pansies, hollyhocks, sweet peas, coreopsis, monarda, catmint – we understand each other. I find sunny spots where they can show off their colors, and they know what to do. In late summer, when the early bloomers finally faded, I did another planting of perennials for one last dance before the big chill arrives. 

This summer was my first attempt at vegetable gardening here in northern Idaho. Last spring, my husband built eight wooden raised beds for our side yard, and I have felt great pressure to perform. Let me just admit that I am glad I bought the book, “Vegetable Gardening for Dummies.” I followed the instructions for growing asparagus, including letting this, my first crop, all go to fern-like seed, and will have high hopes for many sweet green stalks next spring. My carrot patch is yielding enough beta carotene to share with the neighborhood’s wild rabbit. I have been pulling a few carrots nearly every night for salad or as part of a main dish, and leaving the rest in the ground until needed. The bunny seems to know that he doesn’t have to raid the entire patch at once. So far, we are coexisting peacefully, carrot-wise.

The corn crop has been disappointing, with many of the ears infested with weevils – and lady bugs. Why can’t those cute little red critters hang out on rose leaves where they belong, eating aphids? (Speaking of aphids, my greatest humiliation of the season was draping banana peels on the rose bushes in the misguided belief that the peels would kill aphids. Don’t believe everything you read on the Internet.) Another hazard in the corn patch has been Benjamin BadKitten, my garden staff member. In mid-summer, when the stalks were high and the sun blazed, he decided that the perfect napping spot – pardon me: the perfect supervisory spot – was in the middle of the corn plants. Benjamin is a sound sleeper, and he apparently rolled his ample backside onto the stalks while taking a catnap. The result was a soundless cry of “Timber!” and a toppling of corn plants onto the cat. (I know this because I saw him emerge from the corn patch, wearing strands of corn silk over his ear.) We’re eating the few remaining undamaged ears of corn, and have found the kernels sweet but more chewy than crisp. I’m still optimistic about being a corn farmer, though, and will plant again next spring, using a different variety of seed.

After last year’s meager yield, the tomatoes are thriving this time. This is partly due to the absence of our golden retriever, who died in June. Kaylee had the skills and chutzpah of a born thief. There was no garden fence or wire netting she couldn’t crack, if it had fresh tomatoes or peas on the other side. If she had lived, she would have easily decimated my tomato garden – and I would gladly give up all the fat, red tomatoes out there now to have her back, healthy and smiling again, with tomato juice dropping off her face.

I will not plant artichokes again. When people here on the Palouse assured me that artichokes can be grown as annuals, I had to try. My five plants matured well and produced several artichokes each. But instead of the large, meaty leaves I have always found at a grocery store, these home-grown artichokes had tiny, delicate leaves – and far too much of the furry, inedible “choke” at the center. I deliberately let a few of the mature artichokes go to seed in their garden bed, to see the deep purple flower emerge from the center of each plant. I have found a lesson in those dramatic purple flowers: If an impetuous gardener has patience, beauty and joy can come even after a disappointment.

Impetuous gardeners: Get yourself organized before the cold weather arrives

September 17, 2011

The first of the fall plants and flower bulbs that I ordered from garden catalogs arrived this week, which makes my Autumn To-Do List more urgent. Impetuous gardeners love ordering and buying new treasures, but we also need to do some planning to keep our new plants and bulbs alive and happy over the winter. It’s not only possible to be both impetuous and organized – it’s crucial. I learned the value of the organized half of the equation one freezing January day years ago, when we lived in the Seattle area. I still remember kneeling on the frosted dirt in our garden, hand-digging a new tulip bed for the bulbs that had arrived months earlier. My hands were stiff and bluish-red; the ground was unyielding, and the bulbs seemed to multiply with each new hole I managed to hack out. Those frigid hours were the worst gardening day I have ever had – until I imagined a sub-zero January afternoon. putting my tulip and daffodil bulbs to bed here in northern Idaho.

So now, while the days hover in that perfect harmony between summer and fall, make time to deal with the garden projects that won’t wait until Thanksgiving. Take a walk around your yard and garden, carrying a small notebook, and write down what needs to be done soon. (May the Garden Goddess walk with you, and may your list be shorter than mine.) Before I can plant the newly arriving tulip and daffodil bulbs, I have to dig new garden beds. I will finish that project by next week. The other must-do on the list is to finish weeding the final small patch of tall grass and weeds in our side yard. I have big plans for that yard, but, until it is fully weeded, there will be no orchard or spring vegetable garden. I’ll get that done this weekend.

On days when I don’t have time for a four-hour gardening workout, I’ve been doing more manageable – and more fun – projects from my list. Recently I planted pansies and Lenten roses (hellebores) in our front-porch planter, and more pansies in the patio planters. Looking outside when the November chill creeps in, and seeing blooming flowers, will remind me of the continuity of the seasons and the beauty that’s always in our lives.

Another small project on my list is harvesting seeds from my bloomed-out perennials. I have separate envelopes for sweet pea, delphinium, columbine, and poppy seeds. Our across-the-fence neighbor has offered hollyhock seeds, which originally scattered onto her side of another neighbor’s fence. I love the idea of drawing our neighborhood closer through a pattern of shared flowers. Collecting seeds from my own flowers and, in turn, offering them to our many neighbors will be a small way of thanking them for the welcome they have given Lee and me in our first year in Moscow.

Also on my list is transplanting the flower starts I have grown from seed over the summer. Columbine, sweet william, snapdragons and verbascum (mullein) will have special places in my garden beds. I’m so proud of all those little guys for actually growing and have even bigger plans for seed-starting next spring. For impetuous gardeners, a truly successful to-do list needs the option of delegating certain items, preferably to someone stronger, taller, more patient, and less afraid of heights. (Somebody has to get on a ladder to refill the bird feeders high in our hawthorn tree.) At our house, those requirements automatically disqualify my three garden staff members. Rags, our Old English sheepdog, is shorter and less patient than I – Why not just rip out the rosebushes and eat the petals? Kaylee, our golden retriever, is less agile from arthritis than I am, stubborn as a Moscow mule, and even more afraid of heights. And Benjamin BadKitten, although fierce, powerful, regal, and fearless in his own mind, has not yet mastered the use of a spade or gardening gloves.

My husband, however, is stronger, taller, and far more patient than I, and he is not afraid of heights. (Did I mention that he’s patient?) So he and I have talked about delegating some of the items on my list to him: He will rent a big honker of a rototiller to plow up the newly weeded west garden; he’ll transplant the bigger trees and shrubs, and he is the official refiller of the bird feeders.

A reminder from the Garden Goddess helps me find joy among all my gardening fiascoes

Although autumn doesn't begin until Wednesday, I've already started my end-of-season ritual, which I call taking down the gardens. I cut down all the bloomed-out perennials, do some weeding as I move on my knees through the beds, and note the spots where there's room for more plants. Normally I enjoy the tradition that marks the changing seasons. But this September, even as I glory in the newly red, yellow and bronze leaves on our maple tree, I'm feeling tinged with blue. None of my gardens – the flower beds or, especially, the vegetable patches – reached their typical standards this summer. Faithful readers might be wincing in sympathy, because they know my vegetable growing skills are pathetic at best. Acknowledging a drop-off this season takes us into negative numbers. For an impetuous gardener like me, whose heaviest yield of beans, for example, was barely two cups in 2014, it's time for a therapy session with the Garden-Goddess.

During this spring and summer of drought and smoke, I picked enough toothpick-skinny stalks to make one side dish. Total. The rest of the stalks seemed to go seed nearly as fast as they emerged. Asparagus roots are shallow and shouldn't be disturbed by annual fall rototilling, so my husband covered them with a generous blanket of compost last fall. But we had no asparagus soup, fettuccine tossed with steamed stalks, or roasted asparagus with sun-dried tomatoes. We also composted and rototilled a raised bed before I planted sugar snap peas – usually my old reliables, happily climbing their netting and yielding fat pods of sweet, raw peas. This year the quail helped thin the seed rows, and the plants that survived apparently feared for their lives every day. Few of them showed the moxie to thrive.

The bean plants bagged out early, although, compared to the rest of the veggie slackers, they're this year's champs. By combining this summer's harvests of the dried cannellini and red-speckled Italian beans, I'll be able to make one pot of minestrone soup, an autumn treat with homemade bread. The broccoli bed, for which I had high hopes when I planted the little seedlings in June, never recovered from an early onslaught by the neighborhood bunny. Those plants faced a further handicap, as did the tomatoes, when I allowed volunteer sunflowers to grow to full height in their beds. The tomatoes tough enough to grow and ripen also developed skins tough enough to use for belt-making. Of course, the three indefatigable zucchini plants cranked out their squash all summer long, no matter how little care I gave them. Many thanks to readers who took pity on me and sent recipes starring the fabulous Zs, encouraged me to donate my surplus to local food banks (which I did,) and made me laugh with their own tales of green overload.

Our perennial flower beds blazed with color and texture from early spring until mid-July, when the drought and intense heat wilted most of them. Although we used drip systems in the raised beds and the backyard gardens, and I hand-watered the perennials, our water bills for June and July were stunning. Finally, the optimistic gardener within me wilted, too, and I stopped all but the most life-sustaining watering.

Lately I have heard a soft message from the Garden Goddess: Find joy in what is. Look forward to what can be. So I've been feeling thankful for the flocks of finches that perch on this summer's unexpected gift of seed-bearing sunflowers outside my window. The little birds, yellow, gray and white, dangle upside down from the flower heads, selecting their seeds, cheeping happily and calling out to their pals to join them for lunch. I find joy and gratitude every time I stop to watch Rags, our frail Old English sheepdog, slowly make his way down the patio steps and raise his head toward the sun and the breeze. And I'm happy – bemused, but happy – that my chief garden staffer, Tessa the Vague, has found my lap after 14 years and uses it as a safe place for being petted and praised. One day soon, I'm sure, she will remember where the garden is and join me in welcoming a new season. (Benjamin BadKitten, her deposed predecessor, offered to draw her a neighborhood map. The map used his own muddy paw prints to bypass the garden entirely and point the most direct way to the nearby house where two big dogs live. My BadKitten still seems to have a few issues with the staff changeover.)

I'm stepping out of the garden today to a doggone tale at a Texas truck stop

This is a story about goodness, not gardens. I wish I had asked the couple's names, but the story's telling happened on the fly at Moscow Building Supply this week. I was at the front of the store when a small, cream-colored dog with curly fur trotted up to me and seemed to smile as it sniffed my ankles. A man hurried up to me, thanked me for catching the escapee (who had bounded out of the car without a leash,) and scooped the little guy into his arms. I gave the dog a final pat, smiled at the man and his wife and went out to the parking lot.

I hadn't reached my car when the couple and their curly cutie approached me again. “Found him at a truck stop in Texas,” the man said. “There was nobody and nothing around except the truck stop owner, who said the dog had been hanging around for four days and nobody had claimed him. A storm was blowing up and it was getting cold. I tried to catch him, but he wouldn't come to me, so I flagged down a car that pulled in and asked if they'd help me catch my dog.” His dog. I could see where this was going, and already felt the tears slipping out.

“The woman in the car said she'd help. She was little, like you,” he told me, “She got out of the car and knelt down and just put out her hand, and that dog went right to her. He was dirty and sick – and I didn't look too good myself. I'd been driving a lot of hours, hadn't shaved, my white shirt was dirty...” The long-hauler gently picked up the little dog and took him all the way home to his wife. They found good veterinary care to treat the dog's diagnosed prostate infection. “He was just peeing all the time, and I think maybe that's why somebody dropped him off at the truck stop. They just couldn't take care of him,” the dog's rescuer said.

“I sure didn't want a damn poodle,” he said. His plan was to get the dog bathed and healthy, and then find him a home within a week. I couldn't help grinning. And how long ago was that? I asked. He and his wife both laughed. “About ten years,” he said, “and nobody could take him away from me now.” I said they were wonderful people, and their dog was a very lucky guy. We waved to each other as we went to our cars, but I didn't turn on the engine right away. I had to keep wiping my eyes for awhile. In my mind, I kept seeing a small, abandoned dog, hungry, sick, and shivering, dumped like trash at a truck stop in Texas. His fur must have been badly matted and his hope nearly gone. Maybe his former owner was a man who scared him – or worse – because the little guy prefers women, the rescuer's wife told me, smiling. Ten years down, it's more than clear there's one man that well fed, fluffy and confident little dog trusts and adores.

Many of the faithful readers of this column love animals as much as I do. I hope this happy ending warmed your heart as much as it did mine. So let's just rock on with another animal update, involving a milestone birthday for a beloved member of the Rozen menagerie. Benjamin BadKitten turned ten years old on Labor Day, the least appropriate holiday imaginable for my chief-garden-staffer-in-exile. He was fired for doing no labor in my garden (except for using it as his personal privy.) He has no chores for which he is responsible in our home, but excels at creating more work for me. (Vacuuming cat hair off his chair, cleaning up when his sensitive tummy cannot digest a mouse, sweeping up the leaves he brings in from outdoors.)

For all his flaws, Benjamin's value to our family shines when he's with our frail and elderly Old English sheepdog, Rags. This week, my husband and I were reading in the living room when I whispered, “Look at those two.” Rags lay on the rug, with his shaggy chin resting on top of Benjamin's head. BBK was sprawled across Rags' front paws, offering friendship and comfort, and willing to lie patiently while the big guy used him as a pillow. This is one of the reasons I tell the beloved birthday cat that he is the best little BadKitten that ever there was.

Not even fall yet, but let's just put my garden to bed right now. (And what has the BadKitten taught my chief garden staffer?)

Author's note: Today, September 7, 2015, is a major holiday at our house. Benjamin BadKitten is ten years old and celebrating his Labor Day birthday by committing no labor whatsoever.

I eagerly ripped off the August calendar page this week. It's time to move forward from heat and smoke into the red, gold and bronze of September. On Tuesday morning I smiled at the back-to-school photos of children on Facebook, carrying new backpacks and wearing still-spotless sneakers. With a mix of joy and melancholy, I thought of our son and daughter decades ago, as they paused at their classroom doors and looked back at me with wobbly smiles before they took the next steps to becoming big kids.

The beginning of the school year is more of a red-letter marker for me than New Year's day – filled with plans, important dates and deadlines, long to-do lists, and a shift from afternoons in my garden to longer writing sessions at my computer. And there is a cozy attic room in my mind that I've already peeked into. I store holiday memories in there: the golden fragrance of a fat turkey roasting, an autumn centerpiece on our holiday table, set with my grandmother's china, and the laughter of three generations of family waiting for pumpkin pie with extra whipped pie. Then, quickly, the door opens farther to the bright glow of the holiday lights my husband hangs from the eaves and weaves through our shrubbery, the green scent of the Christmas tree that touches our ceiling, bright wrapping paper and ribbons on the table, and the joyous rush of rehearsals for our church's Christmas pageant, which I write and direct. Ideas for that pageant script already have floated down from the attic room and taken center stage in my mind, because a cast of kids, from preschoolers to high school, will expect roles that reflect their personalities, show their humor and goodness, and include their requests for a slightly creative gathering in Bethlehem on Christmas Eve.

This year I'm more willing than usual to start shutting down my gardens for a long dormancy. The summer drought and wildfire smoke not only affected my vegetable and flower beds, but my own confidence, too. I made some big mistakes this summer, the result of impetuous gardening, and am feeling quite discouraged. By allowing volunteer sunflower seeds to sprout and grow in the tomato and broccoli beds, I ruined the possibility of successful crops. (With my history of vegetable gardening, the “possibility” of success is as definite as I can hope for.) Our neighbors' gardens seem to have thrived through the heat and smoke. This week my husband attended a meeting with a friend of ours, who asked him to bring me one of her home-grown tomatoes. It was a Brandywine, I think, and so plump, juicy and gorgeous that I wanted to keep it as horticultural art. But we ate it as the star of a dinner salad, and I savored every tangy-sweet bite. It wasn't easy, because I kept comparing that perfect tomato to the thick-skinned, pallid little orange golf balls I'd harvested from my own plants.

It's me, of course. I am apparently not equipped with the combination of self-discipline, preparation and follow-through that healthy veggie crops require. I've used red plastic, wrap-around trays to aid watering and warmth for the tomatoes, and found no difference between the red-trayed wonders and the ones I allowed to go commando. I've let big, skulking sunflowers invade the beds, because I love feeding birds and find joy in the cheerful flower heads. (Being able to grow a big-honker-anything, even a sunflower that could grow in gravel, is a cheap ego booster.) I let the neighborhood bunny use our veggie beds as an all-you-can-eat buffet, because I can't imagine not feeding a hungry little animal. (Just ask the squirrel that hangs out in our apple tree, for whom I regularly buy big bags of unsalted raw peanuts.)

My personal staff has not helped to raise the garden odds in my favor, either. I employ a frail and elderly Old English sheepdog (retired now, but still able to pee on the grass and in the flower beds;) a chief of staff aptly named Tessa the Vague, who still has trouble finding the garden, and a chief-staffer-in-exile, Benjamin BadKitten, who poops in the blueberry bed. When I demoted Benjamin and sent Tessa up the Rozen corporate ladder, I expected a sweet companion, peaceably settled near me in the garden as I worked (but not too close, because she is not sure she is acquainted with me.) Now, after a few weeks of observing the effects of the changeover, I'm worried. On the few recent days when the fire smoke has cleared, I did some work in several gardens. Tessa knew how to find each of those locations, but I did not see her at all, even though she had followed me (in her vague, meandering way) outside. She could have set out for the side yard and ended up in Kooskia, so I slowly circled our yard, checking shrubbery, flowers, raised beds, and the compost pile (not, unfortunately, an inconceivable possibility.) I finally found her, asleep, under a chair on the patio. When she heard me approach, she blinked. “I am taking my afternoon break,” she seemed to murmur. “My new best friend Benjamin said that now that I am chief garden staffer, I am entitled to four 15-minute breaks every hour. He said you can do the math.”