Autumn: A Time for Letting Go
If we
believe there is a time to plant and a time to uproot the plant, we
can delight in the last roses competing with their own red hips and
the sprawling apricot daisy faces of single chrysanthemums under the
pink veil of muhly grass. We can wait for spring, savoring fall.
Grasses come into their own in November, catching dew and light and
dancing for our attention.
Most gardeners
love November, enjoy chasing leaves off the deck, relishing the
sparkle of red berries as leaves fall from the deciduous hollies.
They welcome this down time, when nature withdraws from the
flamboyant surface to work magic deep in soil and roots. Not every
spot must be packed with color: there is something soul-soothing
about the empty and quiet spaces in our gardens where bare branches
are framed against the sky.
Those plants
lost to sight in high bloom time can be seen now. We notice the
bright yellow centers of Chrysanthemum pacifica, Dendranthemum
pacifica, properly now Ajania pacifica. This low mounding perennial
with the confusing name deserves space because the silver-margined
leaves are attractive all summer. The flowers that finally show up
in late October and last until late November have yellow buttons
without visible petals. Another reason to have Ajania is its
tolerance for the poor soil most of us have plenty of.
This is the
season to putter outside, contentedly wasting time on chores that
probably don’t need doing.
Gifts and Catalogs:
Do holiday decorations appear earlier every year or is it my
imagination? One catalog that announces on its cover ‘The Most
Important Gift Catalog in the World” just may be! Heifer
International helps families all over the world move from poverty to
self-reliance by donating animals and the training needed to care
for them. If you buy a cow, or even a part of a cow, for your
mother-in-law, she doesn’t have to stable it in her condo but can
enjoy knowing her gift provides milk and health to a struggling
family.
Is there a child
you would like to interest in the excitement inherent in the natural
world? How about a living gift? With parental approval you might
give a worm composing kit, an ant farm, even a few chicks or rabbits
if space is available. Through several family moves we hung onto the
dog (very expensive transportation) a Jerusalem cherry, and a jade
plant that I dimly remember in decline at UVA?
It isn’t easy to
keep gifts useful. Stores and catalogs are bursting with ‘stuff’
that begs to be taken home and we face the contradictory impulses of
‘living simply’ and ‘boosting the economy’. We CAN have the best of
both worlds by careful buying. Look for fair traded tea, coffee,
chocolate, and spices for small gifts. For gifts that are events,
buy appliances with the Energy Star label. Check for wood products
from managed forests and recycled paper products. No more trouble
than checking the calories on packages of food.
A great gift is
soon available, new and improved and updated “Home Gardening in
Gloucester”, a resource guide for gardening right here. Through
research and experience the information germane to gardening
successfully continues to evolve as new cultivars are developed and
others found to falter over time. More environmentally benign
practices replace older methods and newer techniques produce better
results so a new edition of this handbook was needed.
Marketing of the
book is being developed and will be announced shortly. Meantime,
fill in the gaps in your shopping list for gardeners. Although the
spiral bound manual is too large to stuff a Christmas stocking, the
modest price, $12, makes it affordable for multiple gifts.
Good News-Bad News:
Were you surprised to read that, after centuries of effort, ships
navigated the elusive ‘Northwest Passage’? In September for the
first time in recorded history two ships managed to make their way
across the top of the world. Due to the effects of climate change,
there are ice-free passages through the Arctic north of both Canada
and Russia. Quantities of time and money can be saved when merchants
use this shortcut. However, if industrial fishing, drilling, and
mining move into a part of the world for which there is no
experience as guide, what may be the unintended consequences? There
are surely enough unsolved problems facing our generation without
biting into this wild mushroom.
Good News: Solar
thermal electricity costs are inching lower as solar installations
increase. The use of solar water heaters is gaining rapidly
throughout Europe. Spurred by the high cost of power, two million
Germans now live in homes where both water and space are heated by
roof top solar systems and Spain is requiring all new and renovated
buildings to have solar collectors. In the US, Hawaii, California,
and Florida tripled their use of the systems in 2006 and this use
has continued to increase.