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Ode to September

Ode to September

I wish I could live the whole year basking in September. To have more time to watch the dynamic, but gradual shift. Summer relenting to its' time. With completion and readiness, the Northern Hemisphere starts to fade. The transformation is steady, and leaves nothing untouched. I fumble to contain it into words on account of my reverence. I yearn to notice each thing as it changes, and never want it to end. September is a cathedral, full of light and ornament and I am a passerby, taking long glances but always on my way to somewhere. I make a mental catalog of each progression, to savor it a little longer.

The first to succumb is the spreading dogbane, in the ditches or on the trailside. A stark yellow emerges from the edges signaling the first of fall has come. The ferns nearby turn crusty. I have watched in August the goldenrods plump with pollen come into prominence, and the asters in their diversity building strength to join the show. The hawks start migrating. One by one, every few minutes, darting through, on their way to catching a thermal. The fireweed let go of its' last blossom, all the way at the very top, near the first day of the month.  My friend and I liken it to a sand timer, when the fireweed first starts in July. It blooms from the bottom of the raceme first, and on up the stem it goes. When the flowers reach the very top, summer's run out. September turns the spent flowers to tufts of silk, and on wiry stems windborn seeds are set adrift on the breeze. After a few weeks, the leaves dry a rusty red and the clumps of silken seed still clinging to the stems resemble clumps of snow. The white masses in the waning green roadsides every bit as beautiful as the pink flowers of July.

Amongst the trees the maples go first. On the hilltops, midmonth. Saturated and dominant, the forest is drenched in reds and oranges, the smell of tannins slippery underfoot after a rain. Iconic and quick, the maple leaves fall early, giving way to the golden birches and poplars at month's end.  The leaves hold steady on sculptural branches of ivory, ashenand inky trunks. The way they glow against a backdrop of conifers, quaking in the mild air, is what I most long to keep about September.

The pin cherry and the bush honeysuckle turn wine red and the mountain ash and moose maple are a watercolor wash of reds and oranges covering the green picture they once were. Driving to work or on my favorite trails I am overcome. How can there be so much breathtaking in this world? Why do we get so much wonderful before the world goes stark and bare?

The waves in Lake Superior stretch out in the east wind as they are wont to do in September. Warm water tumbles ashore in lower light, but wind is still gentle, the arctic air not yet arrived. I imagine these are the trade winds, though I know they aren’t. But the air is sublime, warm, subtle, just a touch balmy. Apples fall, bluebird skies are impossibly perfect. The firewood is brought to town. I count my pumpkins in the patch, 17 this year! And the dream of filming duck feet underwater was finally realized. September is complete. 

Tags: fall fireweed September
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Snippets from October

Snippets from October

10/9 October is: The winding down of the seasonal life. the last of the flowers are cut. Pumpkins are harvested, frost overnight, A rich coating of sparkling frost covers grasses and shrubs. Like a sugar syrup poured over the ditches and up the hillsides. The grasses in the ditches turn a brilliant gold. Gardens are cut back and winter fencing goes up. Cheers from the high school football game fill the neighborhood and days get shorter and shorter. The natural world turns inward. My body seems to respond in kind with less and less energy and more desire to partake in other aspects of yearly life.  I am a ball of momentum that will soon careen to an abrupt halt. Tension is ready to unwind, thoughts ready to deepen. Ready for other aspects, but the letting go of the outdoor working rhythm woven into my body is a bittersweet transition. Leaves hang on in short afternoons. Asters leaves turn red with white puffy seed heads. Maples are bare which is honestly the most beautiful of their forms.  10/12 I went on a run on a cool Sunday morning in the woods. I crested a little hill and caught sight of a poplar tree adorned in gold against a moody blue sky. Interesting how there is such a glow when the light grows dim and the trees lose their green. When the natural world makes the turn towards dormancy. Against the smell of decay, fallen leaves on green grass, the world overhead is awash with color and brilliance. Snapped a picture and resumed my watch for the last mile and a half. And I was lost in thought about the golds of October. Brilliant gold grasses, fat orange pumpkins, gold poplars, gold moon, gold twilight. 10/14 There is an overhanging branch, arching and graceful, in a couple of places along the roadside. I look for them instinctively as I drive those stretches. It holds itself up, out and over the ditch, through heavy snows and high wind. I notice them in all the seasons. They wear fresh green in the spring and a yellow shawl in the fall. In winter I adore them the most, the basic structure unencumbered.  They are landmarks to me and they’ve been there for a decade or more. Like an outstretched hand from the poplar and birch, saying hello, reminding me of strength and grace, even when I tire of holding myself up.  10/15 We rake leaves and clean paths. Put up fences to protect shrubs from deer, wandering and hungry in the winter months and in the lean weeks of way spring. We leave the stalks standing and the button seed heads of summer flowers to entice foraging birds and encourage overwintering insects. We sweep and clean the garden landscape until it feels prepared. Not too much but not too little. Until it’s just right. I think of Wendell Barry when he speaks of the body’s daily work. I go through these motions in fall, as I have done for 16 years. I tire at the same time each year as the light and temperature wanes even when I don’t expect to. We are tethered together, the gardens and I, by these seasonal cycles. They tire also, and drop back to the earth for a winter’s rest.  10/16 I think it may be the peak of the golds these days and I feel as though I’ve strayed into a Bob Ross painting. This is the moment when a sharp wind is around the corner, about to blow through and the curtain of gold falls. All the leaves come down to abruptly commence the browns of November. It is my sincere hope, as we end the garden tending for the year, that our efforts have been instrumental in lending a moment or two of true peace, of centering and a glimpse of some sense of harmony that exists in the world, despite its injustice, drudgery and sham. To go looking when the despair settles, and even for a moment, to return to the simple eternal order of things. There is a patient persistent resiliency if you look closely. It can and does aid in restoring hope.    10/21 Under a thinning canopy, the kaleidoscope of the understory and groundcover lights up! Brilliant red bush honeysuckle, creamy yellow thimbleberry, moose maple the color of beaujolais nouveau.  Russett and tawny grasses with some that turn gold or even burnt orange. Spectacular. Amongst the grasses: hazelnut, birch, poplar, and mountain ash saplings- resplendent miniatures of their respective elders’. The rain brings down even more leaves. I am turning my thoughts to plant craft. Dried bundles of flowers and herbs still strung up on strings, drying since the long days of summer. They are about to become wreaths and bouquets for holiday gifts or botanical novelties to keep around the house as the snow piles up.  Today as I raked up leaves and cut back gardens and as the coming rain threatened our work day, a  raven’s persistent voice was among the few birds left in the trees.  As the woods grow quiet and the weather cools, the raven’s cawing is a pensive time travel. To times, years ago, in Alaska’s interior, when I first encountered ravens, and to time spent with Ada, an elderly Athabaskan woman. I was a college student, working as a volunteer for the fish and wildlife service, studying historical Athabaskan uses of medicinal plants.  Ada was then a 75 year old woman and very much engaged in the traditional Athabaskan subsistence lifestyle. She was hard to keep up with. With gnarled, capable hands, a lively spirit and a magnetizing smile she made baskets and dug spruce roots, tanned hides and collected food, among so many other things, seemingly constantly. Anyone eager to learn and willing to venture out with her she called her ‘grandchildren’. We helped her with her fish nets and collected birch bark. She taught us Athabaskan words, the word for Raven in the upper tanana dialect is taatsàan’, and the name I still think of when I hear them. Ada lovingly practiced the traditions of her culture with materials from a land woven into her people. She taught me the value of persistent practice and refinement. Of resourcefulness and ingenuity. For me, witnessing this as a young woman was a privilege and a gift. I always think of her when I wind a wreath, on account of the way she coiled and stored spruce roots. It’s a very different thing, my floral crafts to her lived and practiced heritage, and I don’t pretend to recreate it. but I think of her at this time of year and I feel connected. To something larger, or her spirit, or the full circle of the past, or the rightness of things. Whatever the reason, the time of year has almost arrived, the time to bring the beauty of nature indoors.    10/26 I can understand why we can’t remain drenched in the splendor of fall, why Halloween celebrates death. Why we retreat indoors to roast the pumpkins and think about what winter will bring. We have a predilection to move forward, to anticipate what lies ahead and to keep time with the seasonal cycles as they present themselves in our environments. Today I cut down the frost kissed dahlias, rolled up the drip tape and cleared away the pumpkin vines. With the compost in a pile nearby, I will amend the beds in the coming weeks and plant the tulips. I look satisfyingly over the empty gardens and imagine them anew next season. I will plan and try new things. I think there is a personality type that lends itself to this type of existence. The one who favors trial and error, who likes the process of tinkering and discovery. The garden is the perfect lab for this kind of person, the creative type who likes plants. The one at work on herself as well, always in process, without the goal of arriving. Just summers to winters and the stuff learned in between, over and over, maybe gaining a little wisdom by the end.   

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The Stampede of August

The Stampede of August

August is a stampede. A riot. A flood. A stolen car out for a joyride. The subtlety in the first sweet blossoms of May has become drenched in sun, a cloak of green and a riot of color. It seemed to happen suddenly. Humming along steadily to becoming a runaway train. So many flowers in bloom, so many towering plants in the gardens to trim The weeds never stopped.  Ironically, this is the moment many of us gardeners dreamt of in mid-winter, while pouring over seed catalogs. But when it comes, it has a way of trampling you flat and dulling the senses. I am covered in dirt at day's end and the weariness sets in. We have been working lately in south facing sun, relentless in its afternoon heat. I start to feel like linen that has been worn too long. Rumply and dusty and I long to put on a sweater. Right about now I start dreaming of skiing. Presence wants to escape this discomfort. But doing so will forsake the beauty. More than anything else, I have always wanted to be present for everything that happens outdoors. All the fluttering of birds and changes in the wind. Cloud banks and falling leaves. I don’t want to miss any of it. So it’s disheartening to succumb to sweat and mosquitoes. Petty it seems when there’s so much to behold! How often do we wish in mid-winter for the glow of an August afternoon, the symphony of crickets offering perfect peace. Fellow landscaper Ann takes a different approach. She doesn’t escape, She tries to sink in instead. While laboring under the difficult circumstances of August she slows down. Thinks of each task as pieces. Then moves onto the next. I do the same when running up a hill. I run each part of the hill until I reach the top. Simple.  I wash the dirt off and take a minute. I come back to the fleetingness because of the plants and the moments. The goldenrods glowing and offering nutrient rich pollen to  foraging insects, the spires of liatris a shade of purple that's almost electric. The cheerful and charming heliopsis. And the dahlias! Well, they’re a wonderland. The blaze of strawflowers and drooping heads of Panicum offering a promise of autumn.  The rows of flowers towering over my head, sweet cosmos and Rudbeckia trilobum. I weave and bend to get through. The crickets chiming in late afternoon as I rush to get everything done in these shortening days. In a few months the patches of ground these ephemeral wonders of plant life occupy will be bare once again. The tall rows of magic will be gone. I will have my skiing. I try to savor this richness right alongside the sore wrists and aching muscles. This storm of plant life, crescendoing in August. Soon to become the bittersweetness of fall. 

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Plant Stories - Bells of Ireland

Plant Stories - Bells of Ireland

I grew some decent Bells of Ireland this year. Which isn’t an easy thing to do, as it turns out. They have always fascinated me, they’re unlike anything else. The flowers are the tiny white inside of papery bells arranged in clusters around the stem. The plant is in the mint family and native to western Asia. I’ve always thought the scent is reminiscent of Irish Spring Soap. Or green apples. I’ve been growing things from seed for a long time. About 25 years. But this is the first time I’ve ever grown some nice looking Bells of Ireland. I’ve tried before, but they were scrawny or too few in number to use. So this winter I did some research. I discovered they are in fact finicky and tricky. And slow. I froze the seed to break the seed coat. I tried the wet paper towel on a heat mat trick to break dormancy, transplanting individual sprouts into a flat. Although after germinating they don’t like the heat.  50-60 degree growing temperature is best during all stages of growth. I had to find a zone in my house that was just right. They also don’t like being root bound, so it’s a gamble as to when to trick them into growing in late winter in order to plant out in spring. If it gets too hot and too late, they will grow teeny flowers on short stems. I bought a lot of seeds. I had some setbacks and some success and kept sowing successions of them. I got about 35 plants. I planted them out early. Earlier than intuition tells you. It’s been a cool summer. That’s been helpful. I cut the first flowers in mid-July. I marveled and was filled with a satisfaction that was so complete it surprised me. The sight of the plants growing sizable, usable stems seemed to deliver me to an unexpected place that felt like a form of arrival. Of sorts. Like something hard won. Not just in terms of the tricky plants, but that was part of it. Like a quality of being was tied up in it. Then I remembered Susan Bill.  I met Susan Bill in the summer of 2000 on Lopez Island, Washington. She was a flower farmer somewhere in her 50’s. Or maybe late 40’s. I was only 23 at the time and everyone I met that was older than me was a real adult, age was irrelavant, and I was an intern, just out of college. I was working for the Lopez Community Land Trust on a 6 month stay on the island. My project was a recipe book featuring local growers and their favorite seasonal recipes containing local foods. I ventured out to Susan Bill’s place one day for an interview and found her in the middle of a harvest day, a whole team of helpers milling around, with her at the center trying to coral the effort. I finally flagged her down, asking for a few minutes for my project. She was sweeping in her mannerisms, weathered by the sun, and wore a big sun hat. She was direct, funny and extremely succinct. I liked her immediately. She had a way of making you feel like if she was giving you a few minutes of her time, you better listen up. When I asked her about her favorite recipes she didn’t hesitate. She went right to apples. Being in Washington state, it was a bit of a given for most people. While she talked she interrupted herself multiple times to shout instructions to her crew. Having grown up on Lopez island, and growing a lot of apples herself, apples reminded her of her parents. Specifically, Apple Brown Betty. She told me that her mother, Sally Bill, always said the only reason that her father, Sandy Bill, married her was for her Apple Brown Betty. A weird dessert that’s basically apples, butter, bread crumbs and sugar. Susan’s family loved it though. I pulled out my camera and asked to take her picture. She hesitated at this, but looked at the huge bunch of Bells of Ireland in her arms, clutched them a little tighter, and looked out into the field. I snapped her photo.  That was it. I never saw her again, we never became friends. I left the island a couple of months later and have never been back. When I look at the photo now I can't be certain that she's actually holding Bells of Ireland at all. It's too blury to tell. I think maybe the flower is bupleureum. Because I know more plants now, and I doubt my memory. In my mind though, it has always been the bells. She and the Bells of Ireland are inextricably linked. Her character and that flower. That is what it became for me. It was just a small moment when I was a young woman. A short conversation for my internship project. I never made the recipe. It wasn’t until I had my Bells of Ireland in my bucket that I felt the connection. To that moment. To the impact her presence had on me right then. This dignified woman in her 40’s or 50’s. Her grace, style, commanding and warm spirit to my young mind, still taking everything in. How we carry tiny moments with us throughout our lives, sometimes unknowingly, that run scripts in the background, telling us who to become, what to strive for, what to value. Just a blip really. And 25 years later, I feel like some small part of me has been reaching for the character of Susan Bill. To be in my 40’s and be weathered and warm, to be holding a beautiful armful of Bells of Ireland, those strange flowers that smell like Irish Spring soap, as I told my story to a young stranger.   

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