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.