The Party's Over

We’ve been living on borrowed time for the past month.  Daytime temperatures have risen as high as the sixties and low seventies while the all-important nighttime temperatures dropped into the thirties but fell below 35 only once or twice.  The result has been a best-of-both-worlds autumn: lots of color on the things that are supposed to change color (trees and shrubs), with an extended season of green for our annuals and temperature-sensitive perennials. 

The Japanese waxbells that were still
attractive just a few weeks ago...

Three nights ago, though, a cold front came through Boston and we awakened to temperatures in the low twenties.  In just six hours, the last vestige of the 2013 summer gardening season vanished.

... turned to brown stalks overnight.

The change was startling.  The Carolina Silverbell (Halesia tetraptera) behind our house dropped every one of its still-green leaves in the space of a few hours.  Our Japanese waxbells (Kirengeshoma palmata), though somewhat straggly in appearance because we’re down to ten hours of sunlight, were looking fine Thursday afternoon.  Friday morning, they were limp brown stalks.  Except for the most sheltered specimens, our hostas collapsed into yellow mush.  Overnight, the leaves on our hydrangeas turned limp and black.

The inner sidewalk bed on
Memorial Day...

Those few hours of a hard freeze greatly simplified our end-of-gardening-season clean-up strategy.  A week ago, I was cutting down perennials as they passed from green to yellow.  This past weekend, Betty and I clear-cut entire beds.  The only perennials that stand unscathed are the hellebores and heucheras (both winter-hardy), and a group of plants that are marked to be divided.

... and after it was cut down
over the weekend.

The vegetable garden is now just a small clutch of frost-tolerant root crops (turnips, carrots) and cold-indifferent specimens like chard and leeks.  The fence is gone, and we can only hope that the deer are occupied elsewhere.  The day before the hard frost, we were in the Berkshires and raced back in the later afternoon, picking two dozen gorgeous butternut squash just as the sun set.  Had those squash remained in the garden overnight, they would have been damaged.  Instead, they’re now in our basement, cleaned and ready to age into perfection and ready for use over the next several months.

There’s no rhyme or reason to the date of the first hard frost.  It has come as early as the middle of September and as late as early November.  Given a choice in the matter, I prefer the lingering autumn, with a gradual cooling that is finally punctuated by that freeze.  We have at least four months before we see the first crocus and snowdrops, and five months before winter gives up its hold on our corner of New England.  Knowing what lies ahead makes me appreciate this October respite all the more.

Twilight Time

In May, more than a hundred
varieties of annuals awaited containers.
Double-click on any image to see
the slideshow at full-screen size.

From the middle of May through the end of August they are the ambulatory roving ambassadors of the garden.  Our containers filled with mixed annuals line the driveway, get massed and un-massed depending upon what is in bloom, fill in holes in beds where perennials have passed, and bring bright splashes of color to our deck where only containers can thrive.

At the height of the season, a
grouping of more than a dozen
containers are massed

The containers are inexpensive, single-season experiments for plants trying out for a permanent place in the garden scheme.  This year we welcomed back coleus ‘Big Red Judy’ for a triumphant return while deciding that a lobelia Laguna Sky Blue bloomed and passed far too quickly to be put on the ‘repeat’ list.  We discovered Kangaroo Paw (anigozanthos) and it immediately earned a gold star for its bloom-till-it-hurts attitude while fragrant nemesia (nemesia aromatic) became a staple in half a dozen containers.

More than a hundred different cultivars of annuals went into the creation of roughly thirty large container gardens.  Another twenty containers have fixed specimens – a loropetalum, a cape plumbago, a crape myrtle and an acuba, for example – that we overwinter in the garage because the shrubs (some now seven or eight years old) are not hardy to zones 5 or 6.  Our water garden plants, too, are overwintered; trimmed severely and placed in a bank of basement windows where they will hang on for seven long months.

By the end of September, the
annuals are fairly well shot

But come the beginning of September, the annuals are spent.  They have spent the summer on steroids; continuing doses of plant food to force blooms and heavy trimming to encourage branching.  By the middle of September, the sun no longer climbs directly overhead and, after the autumnal equinox, daylight shrinks at an alarming rate.

In each of the past five or six years, a September frost has provided a final answer to the question of ‘when should we take apart the containers’.  This year, while temperatures dipped into the upper thirties several times and frost nipped at our vegetable garden, our containers emerged in the morning unscathed.

Ballast that made pots lighter
is removed and cleaned for
use next year

Today was the day we chose to bring the container season to a close.  In a several-hours-long marathon, I placed containers in a cart and brought them, assembly fine fashion, to our ‘potting’ area.  There, Betty ruthlessly yanked out entire plants or broke off tops.  Depending on the size of the pot, either she or I dumped the pot into one of our transplant beds where she methodically tore apart roots, salvaged ‘ballast’ material for reuse next year, and spread the spent potting mix over the bed’s base of topsoil, where I then dug the two planting mediums together.  By next spring, the bed will feature well-aerated soil enriched with peat and vermiculite.

Containers await cleaning

Tomorrow, we begin the second part of the process: cleaning the containers with a mild solution of bleach to ensure that no insects overwinter with the pots that will hibernate in the basement until next May. Those that are destined for the garage will be inspected for both tiny hitchhikers and insufficient room for root growth.  By the end of the week, only a handful of the 50+ containers that were in the garden at the peak of the season will remain on view.

This container will
stay in place for the winter

Two of those will be a pair of cast iron urns that, at present, contain a vigorous coleus ‘Alabama Sunrise’, perennial strawberry (with fruit), and a calibrochoa ‘Lemon Slice’ that has been in continuous bloom since the second week of May.  When that hard frost hits, the coleus and calibrochoa will be taken out and evergreens will take their place.

If this sounds like a lot of work, it is.  But the time elapsed in taking down this part of the garden is a fraction of the weeks that are spent finding and assembling the right plants each year that make this a special part of our garden. 

Little White Lies

Do you want to hear someone tell a lie?  Just ask any gardener how much time they spend maintaining their garden. You can be absolutely certain that the answer they give – no matter how large or small the number – will be understated.  The actual time may be ten percent longer or twice as much as they tell you, but it will never be less than what they say.

We tell these fibs for three reasons.  First, we may genuinely think that gardening takes less than five hours a week.  That’s because the gardener is thinking about April or November when chores are light.  Or, they may be averaging in the winter months when, at least in New England, the only gardening is indoors.

The second reason is that gardeners aren’t looking for pity, brownie points, or convoluted looks when the honest answer is, “Oh, twenty hours a week in season, five or six at the beginning and the tag end.”  The gardeners I know are proud of their work and they don’t want to be seen as having some form of mental illness for devoting so much time to making things look really good.

The third reason – and the one that causes me to write this – is that gardeners forget about the ‘big push’ activities that come at the beginning and end of the season. 

The list above (double-click on it to see it at a larger size) is not contrived.  It has been posted to our refrigerator door since September 21.  On that date, Betty and I did a walk through the property and she called out things that need to be done as we get toward the end of the season.  I was the scribe and, because my handwriting is barely legible under the best of cases, I typed up the list after the walk.

This yellowing daylily foliage makes
the garden look ragged

New England gardens at the end of September show their age.  Most annuals are shot, as are perennials like hosta and daylilies.  There are also plants we put up with during the growing season – such as allowing milkweed to run rampant in places – that now look like poor gardening now that the birds, bees and butterflies that fed on them have decamped for warmer climates.  Performing this end-of-September cleanup greatly improves the look of the garden and extends its season by several weeks.

With the daylily foliage cut back.
Manhattan bed shows off the
still-blooming sedum and asters

The list consists of both things that can be done in a few minutes (‘cut hosta flowers in white garden’) and tasks that are backbreaking (‘turn 5-bin composter’).  There are chores that can be done in pieces, such as taking apart those leggy containers, and ones that are best done in one fell swoop, like cutting down daylilies.

Some of the chores are Trojan Horses.  I cut the dozen or so branches that overhung our forest pansy redbud (cercis canadendis) and a Rose of Sharon (hibiscus syriacus).  But taking down those tree limbs brought to light a similar number of ‘problem’ branches that were heretofore hidden.  And, allowing those two cultivars to get adequate light started me thinking about the fate of the shrubs in out Long Island bed that are starting to ‘lean out’ because the copse of trees behind the bed is also sending out intruding branches.

And, some chores only seem simple.  One bed had both bee balm (monarda) and black-eyed susans (rudbeckia) to be cut down.  But the monarda is prone to diseases.  It must all be taken out at once and clippers cleaned with bleach afterward to prevent the spread of the powdery mildew that affects it.  Only when the monarda has all been cleaned and bagged can the balance of that bed be worked on.

I am not doing this alone; Betty is dividing hostas and moving grasses.  She’ll also take on the ‘skilled’ work on the list.  But it is the undergardener’s job to plow into the stands of daylilies and get rid of their now-yellowing foliage.  (See the ‘before’ and ‘after’ photos to understand why this needs to be done.)

So, all in all, how long will it take to complete this list?  I don’t know, probably half a day.

Something in the Air

The blue area is a frost warning

Autumn was in the air this morning.  The calendar says there is still another week of summer but it has not felt like summer for several weeks.  Moreover, there is a frost advisory tonight for the Worcester Hills (some 40 miles northwest of here).  If there’s frost about, it’s definitely no longer summer.

In our vegetable garden, the corn has been pulled and the green beans (and the bean beetles – good riddance!) are just a memory.  Zucchini that grew from a flower to a baseball bat in three days now takes a week or longer to become picking size.  Tomatoes and eggplant continue to ripen but no longer get larger.  The winter squash is ready to pick.  Only the leafy greens are happy with this weather.

The maple across the street
has turned color prematurely

Most of the trees on the property still have that voluptuous, late summer look but, here and there, the leaves have started to turn.  There’s a diseased maple across the street that has turned color prematurely.  One of our itea ‘Henry Garnet’ is getting a jump on the season, with a quarter of the plant already speckled with red and orange.  At the rear of our property an ash is also dropping yellow leaves – on schedule.

The hummingbirds have departed.  Just a week ago they were dive-bombing one another at our feeder in some senseless ‘if-I-can’t-have-it-then-neither-can-you’ ritual that must be programmed into their DNA.  Hummingbirds know when the fat lady is warming up in the wings.

Yellow ash leaves - on schedule

The hostas are turning yellow.  They’ll turn to yellow mush with that first frost, and those hostas that wish to go out with a semblance of dignity are doing their thing now.  Presumably with the expectation (valid) that Betty or I will cut them down in the next few days.

Itea 'Henry Garnet'
getting a jump on
autumn color

Just as there is a point in March or April for ‘firsts’, now is the beginning of the time for ‘lasts’.  I have re-directed the fill valves on our rain barrels; when they’re empty they’ll be put away.  I weed-whacked the community garden this morning, knowing it was for the last time this season.  I’ll take up the soaker hoses, clean them, and put them away for another year’s duty.

It’s not a melancholy time – far from it.  Apple picking has started and we’ll be headed out to get a bushel of Macouns next week.  Autumn brings its own excitement in New England.  I’m ready.

See You in September

I walked out to get the newspapers this morning, got fifty feet down the driveway, and headed back into the house for a camera.

The conventional wisdom is that New England gardens are shadows of their summer glory by the beginning of September.  Annuals are overgrown and rangy and perennials are spent.  Trees and shrubs are saving themselves for an October burst of dying splendor.

The accompanying photos (double-click on any one of them to get a full-screen slideshow) demonstrate that the conventional wisdom sometimes gets it wrong.  Each of these shrubs and perennials are within fifteen feet of our driveway.  Some notes about each one: 

asters

Asters:  I’m not certain that we’ve ever actually purchased any asters.  Those that are in the garden – like the ones at left in the outer sidewalk bed – were transplants from elsewhere, but they’ll bloom from now until the first hard frost.  The trick to getting them to bloom like this is to cut them back hard in the last spring and early summer.  The other trick is to pull them out when they self-seed. 

autumn clematis

Autumn clematis: This is the only clematis on the property and one of a handful of perennials still around that were here when we purchased our home in 1999.  This grows up a shady corner of our library and our lone contribution to its success is to provide it with a trellis to reach a height where it can get adequate sunlight.

Caryopteris ‘Sunshine Blue’ is one of the three cultivars of that shrub that we have growing on the property.  From mid-April when it leafs out until the end of August, it is an unobtrusive part of the shrub bed at the front of our 

Caryopteris 'Sunshine Blue'

property. Then, overnight, pale blue flowers appear and the bees go bananas.  The blooms fade by the end of September but are worth the wait.

Daphne ‘Transatlantica’ has both dazzling clusters of long-duration white flowers and the added bonus of an intoxicating perfumed scent.  It will keep blooming right into winter.  The shrub’s lone shortcoming is that its evergreen leaves collect 

Daphne 'Transatlantica'

snow and so the branches are prone to tearing.  Each October we build it a burlap enclosure to keep its branches upright.  The pink phlox in the background is the fading remnant of an August bloomer.

Japanese anemones (Anemone hupehensis var. japonica) are more of a curse than a blessing.  We keep them in one spot only through a rigorous process of digging out their runners several times a year.  Yes, the flowers are lovely, but no other fall bloomer requires so much maintenance.

Japanese waxbells

Japanese waxbells (Kirengeshoma palmata) are a terrific plant to have around.  You see them here at their maximum height and vigor.  Once we get a hard frost, they’ll die back to their roots.  Why is this good?  Because it means I can dump six feet of snow on them from our driveway’s turnaround every winter and the plant doesn’t resent it a bit.  The beautiful yellow flowers are a September-only event. 

New York ironweed,
with hydrangeas below

New York ironweed (Veronica noveboiracensis) is, amazingly, a member of the daisy family.  We have two stands of it and, after seven or eight years, it is well established and sturdy.  The strong purple/lavender color is striking, and the bees cover it from dawn to dusk.  Some gardeners may be put off by its height (ours’ is nearly six feet) but you just don’t get color like this in autumn.  The photo at right also shows some of the late-blooming hydrangeas in our garden. 

Sedum 'Autumn Joy'

Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ may be the most overused stonecrop in gardens today, but you can’t argue with success.  From early May to late August, it’s a terrific ‘filler’ in several of our beds; providing beautiful green-gray succulent stems and leaves.  Then, at the beginning of September (hereabouts), the flower head opens deep pink and stays that way for at least a month, then gradually turns a coppery color that provides structure even when the flower is spent.

Pink turtlehead

Pink turtlehead (chelone obliqua) is another garden standard that hides in plain sight until the end of August when, seemingly overnight, it is covered in blooms that persist through September.  Until last year, we had a companion white turtlehead (chelone glabra) that is a less aggressive grower and got crowded out of the shade bed where it was attracting the rare Baltimore checkerspot butterfly.

Joe Pye weed (eupatorium) comes in many varieties, and this variegated cultivar with

Variegated Joe Pye Weed

white flowers that graces our xeric garden (probably’ Jociuis Variety’) at the front of the property is a show stopper.  We also have eupatorium ‘Chocolate’.  They bloom profusely from September until well into October.

That’s a literal snapshot of the September bloomers.  I have omitted a few that have been blooming since midsummer such as agastache (also called the ‘giant hyssop’), rudbeckia, and various helianthius.  Among shrubs, we have a plethora of hydrangeas (notably the 'City Lights' series) that have been blooming since June and will keep up their show through most of the month.

What I hope I've shown is that September doesn’t have to be the intermission between summer blooms and the 'main attraction' autumn spectacle that attracts the leaf peekers.  If you garden in New England, take a look for these gems. 

The New Neighbors

Our new next-door neighbors moved in a few weeks ago.  Last weekend, glasses of wine in hand, we took them on a tour of our garden.  It was an unexpected educational experience for all of us.

This is where our new neighbors
moved from

They moved to Medfield from Boston's South End where they lived in a condo at the corner of Mass Ave. and Columbus.  Now, they have two acres in the suburbs, a toddler, a second child on the way, and a hyperkinetic dog with a worrisome attachment to its chew toys.

They were drawn to Medfield by the sense of community.  When they were driving around, looking at places they’d like to live, one of our neighbors took the time to talk with them about our little cul-de-sac.  They also say they took a long look at the part of our garden that is visible from the road and liked what they saw. 

This is their new home.  Both photos
encompass roughly two acres
of land.

Now, they have the opportunity to put their stamp – in reality, the first-ever stamp – on a 17-year-old home’s landscaping.  The house’s previous owners – financial services professionals who both worked long hours and were frequently out of town – left all landscaping decisions to a firm that apparently believed that it was a sin to spread anything less than a dump truck full of mulch on a bed.  What our new neighbors bought is basically two acres of over-fertilized grass.

I expected we’d be asked a lot of questions and we would provide sound information.  What I didn’t expect was to discover that the questions they asked us would be as interesting to us as the answers we gave them. 

Don't call a forest pansy redbud
a cercis canadensis.  You sound
like a garden snob

Here’s what I learned:  as gardeners, we take far too much for granted.  We use an intimidating shorthand and jargon that we should securely lock away in a vault when we talk to someone who is just getting started.  We believe that pointing in the general direction of a plant from fifty feet away is as useful as walking up to the plant and touching it.  No, it isn’t.  Touching is a very good thing.

Here’s what else I learned:  sometimes, we’re inadvertent snobs.  We assume that everyone has long since sorted through the false marketing claims and emotional appeals that bombard consumers, and can filter facts from hype.  No, we can’t.  Never assume that the person you’re speaking with has read a certain article or heard ‘that expert’ speak.

Nowhere does this insider/outsider gulf become more evident than when talking about ‘organic’.  At the top of our neighbors’ wish list for their lawn is having a safe, pesticide-free environment for their children’s long-term health and well-being.  But what, exactly, is ‘organic’?  My somewhat cynical answer is that ‘organic’ is a more expensive version of whatever a marketer is already selling; a means of picking the pockets of unwary homeowners.

But, at the same time,
'oxydendrum' sounds a
lot better to the ear
than 'sourwood'

So, for two hours, we explored the garden.  We talked the benefits of ‘natives’, of compost and of water barrels.  We said it was OK to have clover in the lawn and that a modest amount of insect damage to trees and shrubs means moths, butterflies and beneficial insects are finding food.  We talked drainage and plants that hold hillsides in place.  We went shrub-by-shrub through one bed, talking about each one’s virtues and limitations.

Along the way  I learned that ‘forest pansy redbud’ is a lot easier name to remember than ‘cercis canadensis’ but that ‘oxydendrum’ is a much more appealing name for a tree than ‘sourwood’. 

It has been thirty-five years since Betty and I purchased our first home, a brownstone in Brooklyn with a concrete front yard and a back yard that had been used as a dog’s ‘convenience’ for more years than any bib of grass should be asked to endure.  I think about everything we didn’t know and all the misconceptions we brought to those first projects.  A number of houses later, we know a lot more than we did in 1978.  The wonderful thing is, we’re still learning.

I like our new neighbors.  They bring energy and enthusiasm to a big job.  Fair from being naive, they understand that theirs is a long-term undertaking and they’re going to tackle it one project at a time.  Watching and helping will be fun.

On the Road Again

Last September, I was invited to give a talk on ‘The Garden Club Gang’ at the New Meadows Garden Club in Topsfield, Massachusetts.  The member of the club had read the book as their summer reading ‘project’ and they thought that hearing about how the book came to be written would be a nice ‘ice-breaker’ for their first meeting of the new club year.  I readily agreed.

Then, about two weeks before the meeting, I received a call from the club president.  “You know, we’re a horticultural club,” she told me.  “We want to hear about your book, but could you also make it a horticultural talk as well?”

“Sure,” I said.  And then immediately started wondering what business I had speaking about gardening to garden clubs.  Betty is the horticulturalist in the family; I’m the mystery writer. 

But then I started thinking about ‘The Principal Undergardener’ and my idiosyncratic take on the subject through that lens.  For those who may not be regular readers, this blog is my ‘etude’ – a warming-up exercise for writing fiction; akin to a pianist’s finger-stretching pieces.  I write about gardening because I spend a lot of time in gardens, and the internet is already overly full of learned discourses on wine and politics.  What I frequently write about is gardening as humor.  I create a tight, 900-word essay and then polish it as relentlessly as I would the chapter of a book.

And so I began weaving a dozen or so essays into a talk – ‘The Rule of Three’ and ‘The Slug and I’, for example – and found illustrations in my blog files.  With forty-eight hours to spare, I had a talk completed. 

The talk was a success.  And then clubs started discussing among one another about what programs they had enjoyed and my name came up.  Then I went to a few libraries and they, too, began posting reviews.  To make a long story short, I have forty-five talks scheduled between late August and May.  Most are at garden clubs but a number of my talks will be open to the public.  Here’s the schedule of upcoming ‘open’ presentations as I currently know them.  If a garden club is hosting the event, that too is noted, which means you may have the pleasure of also sitting through a club meeting (I find them fascinating).   All locations are in Massachusetts except as noted:

September 19  7:00 p.m.         Billerica Library

October 9        11:45 a.m.       Jenks Center, Winchester (Winchester House & Garden Club)

October 15      6:00 p.m.         Dickinson Library, Northfield

October 16      7:00 p.m.         Norwell Library

November 5    7:00 p.m.         Northborough Library (Northborough GC)

January 15       10:00 a.m.       Belmont Library (Belmont GC)

January 15       7:00 p.m.         Millis Library (Millis and Norfolk GCs)

January 16       11:00 a.m.       Andover Historical Society (Village GC of Andover)

January 21       9:45 a.m.         Needham Library (Needham GC)

February 4       7:00 p.m.         Carlisle Library (Carlisle GC)

March 26         7:00 p.m.         Milford Library

April 14           7:00 p.m.         Chelmsford Library (Country Lane GC)
May 21           7:00 p.m.         Hopkinton Library 

Fair Territory

I don't begrudge fair-goers their
fried foods...

This morning’s Boston Globe features a photo spread on the Marshfield Fair, which opened this past weekend and runs through August 25.  The photo on the front page shows the Midway with its Ferris wheel and other carnival rides; the interior photos are of other fun events such as a glass-blowing exhibition and a llama at a petting zoo.

... but 'my' fair is the one that harkens
back to its original purpose

I had the pleasure to be at the Marshfield Fair this weekend, but it was the one that exists in an alternate universe; the one that harkens back to the original Marshfield Agricultural & Horticultural Society.  I don’t begrudge fair-goers the thrill of discovering that Snickers bars can be deep fried or of seeing glass geegaws be

Agricultural Hall, then and now

created before their eyes, but I think my fair is a lot more fun.

New England lives in a state of grace when it comes to fairs.  Once upon a time, agricultural expositions were a staple around the country.  The Marshfield Fair, for example, got its start in 1862 when three local farmers formed what was then called the Farm and Garden Group to discuss ways to improve farming.  By 1866, returning war veterans going back to farming needed a means of pooling their ideas and formed the South Marshfield Farmer’s Club.  A year later, the club’s annual summer event had grown so large it was attracting the manufacturers of agricultural implements, while club members showed off their best farm animals and produce.  By 1869, a piece of land had been purchased for a permanent exhibition site and a fine building, Agricultural Hall, was under construction.  In the following decades, the Marshfield Fair ruled the South Shore of Massachusetts.

Quilts and crafts in the
Agricultural Hall

Here’s a description of the fair, circa 1890:  “Before the children saw the flag even, they often heard the band. Coming through the pinewoods, by train, by horse-drawn carriage of every description, and on foot, just before they emerged into sight of the Fair grounds, they heard that joy-thrilling music of the brass band. Here was where Fair really began. Anticipation had reached its height and was soon to give way to the actual joys of Cattle Show. And reality can never touch anticipation…”

But times changed.  The Great Depression killed off many fairs, World War II caused others to suspend operations, and the great Suburban Diaspora of the 1950s and 1960s rendered most of the rest obsolete by converting exurban farmland into subdivisions.  In their place came the state fairs; soulless, antiseptic behemoths that sprawled over a square mile of land and were totally bereft of any sense of their rural origins and purpose.

A display in the holiday mantel
competition

Remarkably, a number of expositions that still look and feel a lot like their century-ago forebears have survived in New England.  In addition to the Marshfield Fair, the Woodstock Fair in Connecticut traces its origins to 1860 and will be held over Labor Day Weekend.  The Fryeburg Fair in Maine dates to 1851 and will be open this year from September 29 to October 6.  And the granddaddy of them all, the Topsfield Fair, which held its first event in 1818, opens October 4 for an eleven-day run.

I spent the bulk of my time at the Marshfield Fair inside that venerable Agriculture Building.  Upstairs, there are displays of quilts; some quite old and others brand new.  There were hand-knitted sweaters – not for sale but, rather, submitted for judging in hopes of securing a blue ribbon.  The whole floor was a tribute to creativity and skill with fabric.

Betty's tri-color
award winner

The real fun, though, was downstairs.  There, Ronnie Lehage presides over what is simply known as ‘Horticulture’, the evolution of the Marshfield Agricultural & Horticultural Society’s original mission.  Gardeners are invited to bring in their best examples of zinnias, cleomes, and anything else that flowers on their property.  There’s a proper ’standard’ flower show hosted by the Garden Club Federation of Massachusetts (point of pride:  my wife, Betty, not only won the ‘blue’ first-place ribbon, but the ‘tricolor’ ribbon for the best floral design within several classes). 

There are competitions to design a small grouping of container gardens and another for holiday mantel arrangements.  There is a horticultural competition for the school-aged set and categories for flower arrangements in purses, watering cans, and recycled objects.  In short, the competitions going on within Horticulture is about skill and creativity.

A 'Books in Bloom' display.
I think I've read that book...

I first came to these fairs as an adult.  As I wrote earlier, I think everyone ought to have the opportunity to try that deep-fried candy bar but, personally, I’ll take a pass.  Ditto the funnel cakes and cotton candy.  But you have never had French fries until you’ve tasted the ones at the Fryeburg Fair.  The potatoes are freshly dug, still with clods of dirt on them.  They’re washed, put through a hand-cranked machine that turns them into strips, and put in a deep fryer.  In less than five minutes, a potato is turned into its finest incarnation.

If you live in New England and have given up on fairs as corny relics, it’s time to give them another look.  And, if you’re thinking of a vacation in New England this fall, keep in mind the dates of those upcoming ones.

Doing the Garden, Digging the Weeds

A question for the day:  does gardening keep you young?

Me, in May 1967

I was seventeen years old in June 1967 when the Beatles released their masterpiece, ‘Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band’.  I had just graduated from high school and was on my way to college in September.  That summer, I had a job working for the town of Miami Springs, Florida, riding on the back of a trash truck.  It was, without question, the most physically demanding work I’ve ever done for pay.

To maintain my sanity, I kept a transistor radio strapped to a belt loop of my sweat-drenched shorts, and ‘Sgt. Peppers’ was the soundtrack to that summer.  I had no favorite track; they were all stunning, from ‘A Little Help From My Friends’ to ‘Sgt. Peppers Reprise/A Day in the Life’.  AM radio stations, though, preferred the shorter selections, and that meant I heard a lot of ‘Lovely Rita’ and ‘When I’m 64’.

I mention all this because I will turn 64 this month and that song has been much on my mind of late.  According to Steve Turner’s A Hard Day’s Write, Paul McCartney wrote the melody when he was ‘about fifteen’ and a version of it was being played by the Quarreymen as early as 1960.  McCartney refined the tune over the years (John Lennon dismissed the song as ‘twaddle’ and would have nothing to do with it) before it appeared as track two on side two of ‘Sgt. Peppers’. 

The gist of the song is that a somewhat socially inept young man ardently wants to win the affection of a young lady.  To do so, he poses questions about what their life will be like “when I get older, losing my hair, many years from now”.  And that life, at least as it sounded to my seventeen-years-old ears, was pretty dull.  “We shall scrimp and save” in order to rent a cottage on the Isle of Wight, and going for a ride on a Sunday morning would be the highlight of the week. Huh?  Knitting a sweater by the fireside?  Please!

But here’s the problem:  I’m about to turn that magical number, and my life is nothing like that.  Betty and I think nothing of popping down to New York for the day, where we’ll cram in shopping, museums and a stop at a garden or two.  If we haven’t been on an extended vacation of late, the reason has to do with our respective schedules.  I’m trying to finish my seventh book while juggling a speaking schedule that I couldn’t have imagined a few years ago; and Betty has a three-year calendar with a full slate of talks, demonstrations and garden club federation events blocked out through 2016.

And here’s the further problem:  I don’t feel like I’m 64.  I don’t even feel like I’m 54.  Maybe 44.  Perhaps it is all a matter of luck:  I have not suffered a major disease or accident and my business career was one that utilized my mind rather than my back (that stint on the trash truck was an eye-opener).  On the other hand, my life has been anything but sedentary.  We have traveled the world and had our share of ‘interesting’ experiences out there.  This weekend, we’ll be kayaking the DeerfieldRiver.  Yeah, it’s only Class 2 rapids, but still…

I’m willing to go out on a limb and credit gardening for keeping me young, or at least young at heart.  In McCartney’s words, “doing the garden, digging the weeds, who could ask for more?”

Digging out the stump of a
birch in, I think, 2006

Gardening is, by definition, largely an outdoor activity.  Active gardening is physical.  We maintain a two-acre property that comprises lots of individual gardens plus an off-site 1,000 square foot vegetable garden.  In creating the garden around our home I have dug out 500-pound boulders and I routinely move fifty-pound containers.  I take down and cut up small trees, dig out stumps and, twice a year, spend one or two days hauling multiple truckloads of brush to the town dump.  I dig trenches and excavate for new beds.  I mow my own lawn.  While I give myself the right to come in during the worst parts of the afternoon heat, I am no stranger to coming in from a gardening session with my clothes soaked through.

I keep up this activity eight months of the year (and, during the winter months, I dig out my own driveway, albeit with the aid of a snow blower).  Unless it is a physical danger to do so (we leave the tall trees to arborists), Betty and I do all the heavy work around the yard.

So, send me a postcard, drop me a line, stating point of view.  I’m turning 64 and, despite everything my seventeen-year-old self sneered at, it feels terrific.

Long Summer Days

This has been an awful summer for New England gardeners.  It wouldn’t stop raining in June and three weeks of July were blisteringly hot and dry.  Much of what we first planted in our vegetable garden never germinated and the blooms of many of our perennials were dramatically truncated first by rain, then by heat.  Only the weeds flourished.

It has taken until now for some semblance of horticultural equilibrium to be restored.  Only a third of our first square of corn broke the earth’s surface but our second square has ripened nicely and the third is already tasseling.  Our green bean harvest was awful and our lettuce bolted too quickly (leaving us the humiliating necessity of making our July salads with store-bought lettuce) but our beets are luscious, our zucchini is firm and sweet, and hundreds of tomatoes are growing plump.  There will be chard until the first frost.

This is the inner and outer sidewalk beds as they
looked on August 1.  Double-click for a full-screen image.

Around our home, the Orienpet and rubrum lilies as well as the rudbeckia and helleniums have exploded.  The clethra shrubs are heavy with their bottle-brush flowers and the phlox stands tall and proud.  White and purple Stoke’s asters and yellow coreopsis and corydalis are spreading into every empty space.  The hydrangeas are voluptuous.  Ferns have run amok.

Gardening is about being patient and rolling with what nature gives you.  We replanted our corn not once but twice and kept our green beans under row covers until what was underneath bulged against the fabric (the bulge turned out to be mostly weeds and the bean beetles managed to sneak their way into the crop despite our best efforts).  But we are now enjoying four ears of corn a day; a pace that seemed destined to last into September.

Nature has also held some surprises in reserve.  Our astilbe is usually a June and early July event.  This week, there are still an abundance of purple plumes.  An unusually large number of hostas in their glory at the beginning of August.  With all these blooms, the bees and butterflies are having a field day. 

Tomatoes are ripening
daily.  These are about
two weeks from picking.

After two lean months, this August appears to be shaping up as one of excess. It is almost too much, really.  The late crop of lettuce and spinach has already sprouted and will be pickable by mid-month.  We will soon have more tomatoes than we can possibly eat or process and so our local food cupboard will be the beneficiary of our excess. The flowers in bloom today are built to last through both heat and heavy rains that define this month. 

Most of our annuals are in containers. They were planted in May and early June and, through the incessant rains of June they suffered; stunted and sullen.  Then came July and they grew rangy.  In the past two weeks they have been trimmed and shaped and now, finally, they are fulfilling their promise.

Finally, there are the ‘winter’ crops – winter squash, principally, but spinach, kale, carrots, turnips and beets as well. The winter squash vines are still relatively modest – a product of too much rainfall and too little sun, but they have taken off in the last two weeks.  As quickly as we pull out spent corn stalks, the squash vines claim the empty space.   Last September, we picked dozens of huge Butternut squash that filled several wheelbarrows. Stored in our cool, dry basement, they were a tasty reminder of summer until April.

All this bounty will all be over too soon. The New England flower gardening season is effectively over shortly after Labor Day because, here at 45 degrees north latitude, the daylight starts to shrink at an alarming rate.  Perennials turn their attention to putting food into their roots to provide the 2014 season’s display.  Because frosts appear with impunity in September, any evening could be the final one for tender annuals.

So, I intend to enjoy this excess of August.  It’s the payoff month for New England gardeners.