Design

The signs of fall are everywhere. The yellows, reds, and browns have appeared, at least in their beginning stages. In the mountains, it's ahead, but in the piedmont, it's not far behind. These are photos from the mountains, though, into the ravine behind our small house there.

I'm feeling awfully behind in my fall gardening at this point. I 'should' have transplanted greens by now; my home-grown brussel sprouts and broccoli seedlings are languishing in pots. I keep catching a poor young opossum instead of the voracious woodchuck in my Havahart trap. This last time (I think it had pushed its way in, as I hadn't left it set), we provided water and food (dog kibble and fresh apple pieces) before it recovered enough to scamper off into the forest edge. I managed to get out before dusk this evening , and sow a round of mixed wild kale, Tuscan kale, and some Oriental Spinach, and managed to water them in well. If I can just keep enough water on those beds, maybe I'll have something to work with, after all. My flats of arugula and mustards look fine, but they're in partial shade in nice fluffy moisture-retentive potting mix. It's been dreadfully dry in August and early September, so everything is looking wan (the gardener included!)

I harvested purple mustard, arugula, spinach, and turnip greens today. It's almost (our) Thanksgiving --Thursday, Nov. 27 this year. Even though we've had frosts, in the protected walls of the vegetable garden near our visitor center, the frost damage hasn't been significant.

I've been too busy this week. Dashing off to work in the morning without time to check on the garden leaves me unsettled and not at ease. There's been lots of activity, but not ones rich in the grounding experiences of nature and the garden. The moon last night gave a hint of the full moon to come -- it's the Harvest Moon, coming on Sept. 15. Fall moons are often wonderful and luminous, because of the intersection of being low on the horizon combined with humid air. We'll see what this Harvest Moon brings. This was my post about last year's. I'll be out in the Garden with whomever shows up.

My garlic order came yesterday. I probably don't really need to order garlic to plant, since I had such an excellent harvest this year, and could use cloves from my harvested heads. But it's such fun to order new varieties - Chesnok Red, Early Italian Red, Red Toch, Shantang Purple, and Susanville. These were grown organically and certified disease-free, from a small, family-run farm, Hood River Garlic , in Oregon. My previous source ( Gourmet Garlic Gardens , run by Bob, the Garlicmeister) in Bangs, TX, provided great garlic, too. I won't plant the cloves until mid-October, or thereabouts. I could even wait until early November, too. I usually harvest in May and June, but this last year is the first I've had LOTS of garlic that we can enjoy through fall, at least.

I hadn't tried growing broccoli rabe before, but this experimental patch is flourishing. I'm waiting for a few flower buds before harvesting, but it looks delicious right now. Maybe because the woodchuck ate all the brassica relatives last summer, the populations of cabbage whites didn't build up -- I've only seen one so far this summer. That's good news as far as the brassica leaf chomping goes -- a large spring red bor kale still looks lovely, and has been spared from being harvested for a stir-fry because of it. I've already pulled out quite a bit of unproductive squash (the yellow squash/zucchini C. pepo sort), making room for kohlrabi, turnips, beets, lettuces, arugula, kale, mustard, and spinach (yet to be planted). Happily, I harvested some nice yellow, patty pan, and eight-ball (Ronde de Nice) squashes, actually my most successful squash foray to date, not counting my stalwart, delicious, and squash vine borer-resistant tromboncino squash. It's ...

Is it fall yet? I feel like a kid asking, are we there yet? August days are trying for gardeners and nature watchers in the southern U.S. It's the worst time of our gardening year, actually -- even in 'good' years, it's hot and often dry. This year, we've already hit 100° in the first week of August. And hardly a drop of rain in the forecast. The cutting from the hardy rose at the corner of the house is flowering beautifully, two hummingbirds are chasing each other outside my window, and I'm harvesting tomatoes, squash, and yardlong beans (the regular beans are sulking in the heat), so I'm grateful for that. And, the dry weather, unlike our usual humid summer days, makes mornings and evenings quite pleasant, instead of sticky. But I'm enjoying thinking about fall vegetables, tough fall-flowering perennials, and fall color. The lettuces, mustard, and mesclun mixes in flats are doing well, although I'm waiting to sow some other t...

I spent a wonderful morning in the garden: deadheading some early-flowering asters, trimming old stems, cutting back the leggy Agastache (anise-hyssop) to encourage branching, and snipping back spent Salvia flowers. It's fun to tweak borders and vegetable garden blocks; this morning I focused on the shed border, moving a couple of plants that needed more space, or a different site, and freeing the edges from the inevitable Bermuda grass invasion. I redid several containers near the potting bench, too, whose perennials had outgrown their pot, and created new plantings with shade-tolerant Heuchera (coral root or alum root), including one of the lime-green leaved ones I'd bought on a whim). I'm enjoying this apricot Agastache -- I've forgotten the species (hopefully, I saved the tag or mentioned it in a blog post) -- its light open flowering pattern is lovely against the shed wall.

Last night was the full moon. It was the Harvest Moon -- the full moon closest to the Fall equinox. It was beautiful here - bright, rising about 8:15 pm, and creating plenty of moonshadows. The nocturnal symphony here in the Southeast is somewhat muted because of drought, but there are still plenty of field crickets singing and tree frog choruses. I had a group out with me, and one of the sharp-eared participants could hear the squeaking of bats as they left for their night hunting. I think my hearing is still good, but I couldn't hear what she did. A young boy was enamoured of my calling for barred owls -- who cooks for you, who cooks for you -- and kept calling himself -- he and his mom thought they heard a reply, although I think it was a bit of wishful thinking. I told the story of how my mother liked to read to my sister and me one of our favorite nighttime stories -- Wait until the Moon is Full. This is a lovely children's story about a mama raccoon, who wants her ch...

The recent rains are really encouraging. And, the temperatures look halfway moderate through the week as well, so hopefully I'll be able to sow some flats of mesclun this weekend, a nd some of the greens as well. I noticed one of the radicchio plants (the female squirrel's favorite ) is starting to bolt. So much for thinking I might get some lovely red leaves this fall. But I think I'll sow some more. I'd better check to make sure I have some that form the lovely red heads in the spring.