My latest garden friend is this Umber Skipper who skipped around all of the zinnias as they waved on their long stems in the breeze… until he found the bouquet I was cutting, at which point he kept coming back to drink at a the more stationary offering of nectar. That was when I could focus on him long enough to find out his name and get a picture of his beautiful wings, and even his body hair.
The friend of a friend who gave me quinces last fall has given from her tree again, bless her heart. This time she didn’t drop them off at church, but I drove across the county a ways to pick up two boxes of fruit at her gate. This I was more than happy to do, because it is a gorgeous drive through hills and valleys, small vineyards and large gardens, along winding roads where every kind of tree imaginable has been planted to round out the natural oak forest.
It has rained and drizzled off and on the last two days, so every tuft of grass or turning leaf is extra fallish and delicious, all the scents mixed up with each other in the damp air. After I picked up my quinces and started back home, I wished so much that I could take a long walk in that part of the country; but the roads are quite narrow, I could not find a shoulder to park on, and I wasn’t wearing good shoes for that kind of outing. So I feasted my eyes on the sights as I rolled along, while my nose drank in the quince perfume from the back of the car.
When I got home, my copy of The Complete Brambly Hedge had arrived, after being delayed for months. Maybe I never had bought one of my own, or maybe I gave it away, but earlier this year I looked and looked and could not find one in the house, so I ordered it. As I leafed through its pages this afternoon I recognized the drama of autumn in the wonderful pictures. I think if I had been able to take that walk in the country, and to peer under the bushes, I would likely have glimpsed scenes like this one, from “Autumn Story”:
Similar things are going on in my own garden, and not just among the smallest creatures. I walked around this afternoon trimming this and that, and pulling long pine needles off of everything. Sunday I found the first ripe fig on the fig tree; this is a whole month later than ever before. Mentions on my blog in the past tell of their beginning to ripen as early as the third week of August. Normally they continue ripening into November, so I hope I might get at least a month’s worth of fruit.
I picked all the remaining (18) lemons from the tree, and was glad to see that, contrary to my fears of there not being much fruit to ripen this winter, lots of tiny lemons have showed up (above), and even blossoms. Somehow my tree is turning out to be a sort of everbearing lemon. That’s okay with me!
The arbutus we call the strawberry tree has both unripe fruit and blossoms as well. I remember the grandboys on a ladder picking the fruit one Thanksgiving, so those treats are yet to come as well.
A Mediterranean Katydid visited me upstairs this week. I think I saw one of those here last year, too; do they like to come in the house for some reason? I assumed that this one would 
rather be outside, so after a couple of days of him migrating from one room to another and lastly surprising me on the bathroom faucet one morning, I got him into a jar and released him into the lemon basil clippings. But it was nice to have his company for a while.
Now — the lemons and quinces are calling me to get to work and put away their goodness against the winter. The sun is expected to come out tomorrow and we have some mildly warm days to look forward to; when the figs begin to come on strong I’ll be dehydrating them to put away, too. My own Autumn Story is one in which I am given, and am surrounded by, nourishing scents and fruits of the earth, and plenty of them.
It was hard to keep up with myself last week, and with all the friends, projects and tasks that fill my life to overflowing. I guess I was somewhat playing catch-up after my mountain retreat the previous week. The garden got gently rained on three times that last week of September, which is unusual. Combined with fog on other days, the dampness caused mildew in the planter boxes, but mostly the lower leaves of the tall zinnias have been affected.
When I noticed the Japanese anemones looking better than ever, it occurred to me to plant a few more this fall, maybe some pale pink ones — but I corrected my impulsivity in time, and won’t be taking on one more project, what with so many others unfinished. A more reasonable goal would be to try to take better care of the anemones I have, and see if they can be encouraged to be taller and more robust. It’s a sign of their middling health, that they do not ever spread and multiply, and their flowers are few and small.
The sneezeweed I grow in a pot looks as well as it ever has. I bought it a few years ago at a native plant nursery, because I love the mountain versions of the flower. I put it in a pot so I could be sure to water it enough; the irrigation settings for most of my garden are set for drought-tolerant plants, and sneezeweed is not one of those. My type is pretty plain, or at least monochromatic, compared to the mountain ones.
In search of fancier kinds, a few months ago I browsed sneezeweeds online for quite a while, and ordered seeds for this one, Purple-Headed. When I am looking at
seed catalogs or even plants in nurseries, all the options seem so do-able and desirable. But once the time comes to get on with the actual work of planting… well, I literally drag my feet. So who knows what will happen with these seeds…
I used my sourdough starter twice last week, first to make a large pan loaf of seeded wheat-and-spelt bread. This is the recipe I have been trying to perfect, but perfection hasn’t happened yet. I may have to pause the sourdough project while I branch out and reach back, to other breads I have made or have wanted to try, like chocolate bread, Indian flatbreads, and applesauce rye.
Buttery Sourdough Crackers was a satisfying recipe that used a bit of starter. This picture shows the dough as it was resting overnight, along with leaves of the lemon verbena that I am drying, after pruning my plant for the first time ever.
I used this recipe for: Rustic Sourdough Butter Crackers as my jumping off place, substituting half dark rye flour, and adding sesame seeds to one half, and poppy seeds to the other. I baked them a lot longer than the recipe called for. The resulting crackers are nice and crispy and easy to eat. The butter ingredient plus the sourdough tang is a great combination.
My friend Lucy and I took another one of our monthly walks, up in the hills again but to a park she hadn’t been to before. It’s mostly very brown up there now, but the poison oak is making red splashes in the landscape. And my old friend tarweed!
The Seek app tells me this is not either of the species I saw on my way up the mountain last month, but Hayfield Tarweed. And it seems to come in white or yellow versions, in one case growing side by side:
The third online Beowulf class was this week, and I spent more than two happy hours in the company of the most delightful teachers, Richard Rohlin and Jonathan Pageau. They both love the subject, and Richard is definitely a Beowulf scholar from way back. I will have to at least quote a couple of lines from the poem here eventually, though it seems that unlike me, most people I’ve talked to got an introduction to Beowulf in school. So you may already be more familiar with the story than I.
At the end of the week, I remembered: apples! It’s time to make a trip my favorite apple ranch, and see which of their 30+ varieties is available now. I squeezed it in on Saturday afternoon, and added a stop at a nursery out that way, hoping they would have starts of some kind of leafy greens I could tuck into spaces in the planter boxes after I take out zucchini and tomatoes and eggplant. They did!
So here in the back of my car is a mix of apples Empire, Jonathan and Macintosh; and six packs of Swiss chard and collards. I do have chard growing right now, but I think I need more. And I wasn’t able to get collards started from seed in August.
One more glad sighting of late summer I want to share, is this half wine barrel that was unplanted through last winter:
When I put in some snapdragon plants in late spring, I noticed a couple of tiny mystery plants that didn’t look like weeds, so I left them undisturbed. Now everything has filled out and I find that I have beautiful Thai basil and tropical sage complementing the snaps. Gardens are ever surprising.
Happy October!
In the middle of the afternoon, a flock of little birds — maybe kinglets? — flew into the garden and frolicked all over, visiting the pomegranate flowers and the fig tree, but not the fountain. Their zig-zag swooping looked like play, but maybe they were finding various tiny things to eat. In less than five minutes they were gone.
I watched them all that time because I was leaning against the kitchen counter holding one of my favorite Dansko sandals braced against my body, as Shoe Glue cured in the cracks in the sole. I want to pack these shoes in my suitcase this evening to take on a trip tomorrow, and somehow this task got pushed to the last day possible.
So many things got pushed here to today, or were left in a sort of limbo waiting for me to gather my wits — or something. I wish I could be more organized, but today has been fun, for the most part, after I got down to business.
Part of that work was cleaning out the refrigerator, or at least removing produce that won’t keep five more days. I had plans to make soup with whatever was there or in the garden. That would also have been good to do yesterday, but then, there was no pressure…
The initial reason for the soup idea was a head of celery I wanted to use up, but I found lots more in my own garden to add: tomatoes, lemon basil, tarragon, parsley, smallage, zucchini and eggplant. There was only one of the skinny long eggplants, so what else could I do with it but cut it into rounds and plop them in.
I watered all the newly planted irises, yarrow, lavender, etc. in the garden, and all the potted plants, and I fed the worms. My worms are doing great! I’ve had lots of vegetable trimmings and even whole leaves and fruits from the garden that were so damaged by birds or insects that I couldn’t use them, so my “vermis” had plenty to eat, and seem to be reproducing a lot. When I dig around a little in the bins I always see at least one big cluster of worms of all sizes, which I consider to be the “nests” of young ones.
The strangest thing about today was that I spent the very middle of it in a literature class online, the first time I’ve ever done such a thing. It’s to study Beowulf, and I couldn’t pass up the chance, and it started today. That was very satisfying. I’m sure I’ll have more to tell about it as the weeks go by.
It really wasn’t until after that class session that my serious flitting began — interspersed with hovering, which can mean to hang fluttering or suspended in the air. Or, to keep lingering about; wait near at hand. Those little birds I’d seen weren’t doing any of that, but then, my garden is not their home. I lingered in the garden as long as I could.
And then, I took time to start writing here, which probably means that I won’t get the floor swept before I go. These days when I live alone, I give myself permission to leave without putting everything shipshape; no one is here to care. I can sweep next week.
[Next morning, this morning]: So, I didn’t finish this soup-and-worm story before bed. Now I’m at the airport waiting for my flight that has been delayed two hours, and I can wrap it up here.
Once I got to the airport, I could calm down. The way from here doesn’t involve a multitude of things to remember or tasks to accomplish. I won’t have much time to think about my garden. But from now until I return, I won’t be fully settling. While my plane flies at great speed, my mind will still be hovering, and I don’t expect it to touch down until I am home again.
