My Winter Garden

As the first whispers of autumn crisp the air, I'm beginning to bed down my garden for winter.

The tomato plants went first, much to the disappointment of the squirrels and chipmunks who've been the primary beneficiaries of the crop.  They were followed by the cantaloupes, which I overplanted this year.  Of the dozen-plus 'lopes that grew fat on those vines, we ate four, and gave away one.  The remainder fell prey to rot, sinking slowly into the soil like setting moons.  This being only my second year growing them, I'd neglected to raise the fruit off the ground.  That, and they simply came in too aggressively to harvest them all.  I'll have that in mind next year.

My attention then turned to my sunflower planting.  At the northeastern corner of my front yard, two-dozen-plus sunflowers rise in early summer, creating a towering thicket of greenery topped with a firework display of blossoms.  It gives pleasure to passersby and pollinators alike.  As the helianthus goes to seed, it draws small flocks of goldfinches, which twitter and flirt through the air like flecks of sunlight.  It's just so utterly lovely.  

But that loveliness doesn't last forever.  By early September, those flowers are drooping and dry, the leaves browning and withered.  It starts looking a little grim, a little "gone to seed," as one might say if one were to wrap that metaphor around itself.  

Yesterday, it was time to bring them all down.  Uprooting a flowerbed gets a little more technical when the flowers are nine feet tall, densely packed and interwoven with wild grape vines, grasses, and miscellaneous other flora.

As a suburban gardener, I'm not taking a John Deer DM50 disc mower to the thicket.  That'd make it a one second process, but as I approach it by hand, it takes a couple of hours.

Every part of those sunflowers has a use, so I take them down one by one with care.  

First, I cut away the vines and lower leaves with a hedge trimmer.  Those go into a pile that I mow into compost.  Then I top the flowers, checking each one for seeds that escaped the attention of the birds.  Heavily seeded flower heads I save, hang, and dry.  When they're ready, I'll gently massage the seeds for use either in next year's planting or to give to Mom, so she can feed the birds in winter.  The towering stalks I trim and set against the sunny front wall of the house to dry.  Once they're dried out, they make decent garden stakes, and even better kindling for the hearth.

Taking down those fading flowers is always bittersweet.  Another summer passed, another season gone.  When I step outside the next morning, there's a sense of emptiness in the yard, a notable absence of green and gold.  Like all things mortal, we note a summer garden's passing with an awareness of our own finitude.

But the stalks will burn hot in the hearth on cold nights, the composted leaves will feed the garden when the days grow long again, and the seeds have been gathered in.

When you tend to the needs of the season, and set your intention to seasons yet to come, there's no need for sorrow when the flowers fade.

  

A Measure of the Temperature

My garden is almost entirely shut down for the year.  The beds are nearly all emptied, the final straggling tomatoes and beans and okra uprooted and shredded for compost.  A layer of leaf mulch covers the soil in the beds where I'd put in two new rosemary plants, and should keep their roots cozy over the cold season.  Two beds of garlic went in back at the beginning of October, and should be on track to yield their savory harvest come May.

 But I've still got an item of unfinished business that niggles at me.  My asparagus bed just won't quite stop growing.  

Asparagus, in the event you don't know, is a fernlike plant (closer to the lily, genetically speaking), one that grows around six feet in height.  The asparagus we eat are the first tender shoots that rise in the spring, which can be harvested for six or eight weeks before ya just let the plant grow.   Asparagus rootstock, once established and well tended, can provide nutrition for a generation.  In order to harvest it, you've got to cut down the ferns in late fall, as I have the last three years.  You put a nice blanket of leafmulch atop the bed, and tuck it away for a nice winter rest.

To do that, you have to wait until the tall, delicately formed plants end their annual growth cycle.  This year, they're just not stopping.  

About a third of the ferns have browned and died off, but the majority remain green and vital.  I'm sitting there, tapping my foot, looking at my watch, but they're in no hurry. 

All it takes is one good hard frost to shut them down, but...that frost hasn't come.  Not yet.  Historically speaking, first frost in the Midatlantic comes in mid to late October, but this year, it didn't.  Instead, we got a record-breaking stretch of drought, coupled with anomalously warm weather.  That happens more and more, because of course it does.  That frost is nearly a month late is...well, it's something notable.  Something real.

The longer the asparagi pump energy back into their roots, the stronger the plants will be, so I'm not going to rush them.  That unfinished task will just nudge about in the back of my mind, reminding me of something undone.  

And something a little...wrong.