If I could select one hour of one day as the perfect time to be in a garden it would be a Sunday afternoon at 4 o’clock. A comfortable chair, the Sunday papers, a glass of something iced, the shadows lengthening across the lawn. All work is done, the tools are put way, older children are off doing whatever it is they do, young children are exhausted and deep into a book or device. If they are still standing pull out a blanket, ask them to lie on their backs and tell you what they see in the trees and sky. Dinner is under control, having been collected at a Farmer’s Market earlier in the day. Monday morning is still far away. The return to the office, lab, hospital, school, construction yard, or the desk in a room just indoors – all are a way off. The present is this perfect moment – a Sunday afternoon at 4 o’clock.
The late garden is at its best now. Brown-eyed Susan (Rudbeckia triloba) is holding its own. It’s a friendly plant, nicely shrubby, self-seeding, doesn’t overpower its neighbors, and is less attention-grabbing than Rudbeckia fulgida Goldsturm, the more popular garden variety. The fall asters, the last blues of the season are a fine companion to the brown-eyed Susan. I have planted Aster x frikarti ‘Monch’ although I can’t remember why this particular one. There are many to choose from, and I suspect this was a catalog selection and not one that looked brilliant in someone else’s garden. No matter what variety you order, if you remember to pinch them back in midsummer you will have a fuller bloom than if you left them alone.
Crane’s bill (Geranium sanguinium Rozanne), which I seem to remember seeing in flower in the spring, is blooming in the shade of the Brown-eyed Susan. Actea, formerly cimicifuga (and still cimicifuga to me) has passed, but the white Anemone Honorine Jobert is luminous. Fall color is still a few weeks away, but the Black Walnuts’ yellowing leaves are drifting down – always the first harbinger of the coming cold.
It’s time to bring the pot plants indoors so they can acclimate before the house heat goes on. The plumbago and mandevilla are enjoying their last burst before they go into the greenhouse at Cheshire Gardens in Connecticut for the winter. The Australian tree fern and the aging lemon tree will go along with them. I cut the beefsteak begonias back to nubs in the early spring to see how they would do and they did just fine. Only a fraction of their former girth and now indoors, they should be happy in the warm light of a southwest window and grow to their former size by spring. The red oxalis are back in their usual winter corners and in need of a shearing. The small-leaved green oxalis has also made the move indoors, and it seems fine as it is. The gift of jatropha podagrica, a stunning oddity, is in a corner with dim light and strictly minimal watering as per instructions from the giver of the gift.
Another few weeks and it will be time to put the garden to bed for the winter. I’m planning on a heavy, compost-rich mulch which will start to break down come spring and should be enough to feed the garden. It’s been years since I laid a deep mulch so it’s long overdue. It’s also been years since I fertilized every spring and rigorously divided and replanted perennials every three years. Lately I’ve let them putter along on their own. This coming year I may go back to my early practice on a few test plants and see what happens. Fortunately for us, the plants don’t read the books. Soon it will be time to deal with the perennials in the shared garden. My gardening partner likes the dead flower heads left for the winter; too sad a sight for me, so I cut everything back on my side and will mulch heavily this winter.
When the umbrellas come down and the plant stands go back to the cellar it will be time to turn off the water, drain the hoses and bring them to the cellar too. Friends are travelling again, to Spain for a holiday or to Italy for the opera. I’m restless enough to want to join them, but Israel, where I want to be and where my daughter’s ever-growing family lives, is out of the question at the moment. More fraught with peril than ever, that trip is on hold for the foreseeable future. That leaves me here in this peaceful village with the coming election on the horizon, all the drama that it implies, and the world on fire.
