O.K. Winter’s in the wings, so my helper, Christopher, and I completed final garden tasks.
My many massive hostas looked tattered; I cut them right down to the dirt. My big serrated kitchen bread knife made the job so fast and easy.
Every year I marvel at how much territory these splendid plants occupied. Now the large, empty spaces are shocking.
We moved quickly on to the 100 or so huge ostrich ferns and their tattered green fronds. A sharp tug separated broken stems from thick rhizome crowns, which protruded baldly above the soil, like lumpy brown molehills. (Their tall, dark chocolate-colored fertile fronds will remain upright all winter and then release their spores in spring.)
Roses along the front fence are still blooming! I’ll cut them back, but not until a hard frost. Dormant then, they won’t notice a thing. (If I did it now they’d wake from their drowsiness and spend their waning energy to grow more buds, weakening themselves, instead of settling down to sleep.)
I miss the gaily-colored front walk marigolds: nothing daunts them. With sun, food and occasional drinks these beauties bloom vigorously, pest and disease-free, for months.
Ditto for the still lovely annual geraniums. Those huge, glowing blooms just keep coming, but they were tossed, protesting, into the wheelbarrow anyway, for the same reason.
(I can’t bring myself to tear out the annual geraniums and petunias in the big stone planter on the front lawn yet. They’re so beautiful! Let them have another week...)
I stifled the urge to strangle the irritating spiderwort and instead dug most of it gone. During every growing season it rapidly makes more ‘worts,’ crowding out helpless neighbors – but darn it, those ball-sy blue flowers are so attractive!
(Patrol it to control it, girl!)
The spent sweet autumn clematis’s 40-foot long, stray tendrils drape disconsolately over the alley fence, and twine around the chocolate eupatorium, which is in full bloom now. Snow enhances clematis’s complicated skeletal vines in deep winter. In early spring I’ll chop each one almost to the ground. Two weeks later their annual massive growth toward perfumed glory will happen...
Siberian and variegated iris and the last remaining daylily leaves were trimmed very short. Withered lily stalks were cut to within two inches of the earth; their remaining ‘handles’ mark their location. The last Shasta daisy has faded to black; stems were cut to basal leaves.
But right this minute my favorite flower, the ubiquitous feverfew daisy, is blooming everywhere, as fresh now as it was in spring. Nothing bothers it! This single tough-as-nails plant wins my personal gold medal for beauty and persistence. It scatters itself here and there, and looks perfect practically forever.
“Why grow that weed?” people ask as they look down on its hundreds of beautiful flowers. My answer: “Because I simply love it.” I occasionally trim away old blooms and tired, too-long stem-stalks, leaving a low, compact bundle of green. In a few days fresh, tiny new daisies appear. These keep going ‘til snow does a good dump, which prompts it to pause, and settle down to wait... And wait...
Over seven months later, in spring, it blooms again.
Feverfew chooses where it wants to be, and I almost always agree. (It’s dead simple to remove if it grows somewhere that offends. Simply grab it and pull.)
The winter garden, with its clean, spare look, emerges. Giant, red/gold plumed miscanthus grasses and the huge yellow pyramidal chamaecyparis shrub now co-anchor the main secret garden. Boston ivy’s leaves, which smother the North Gate roof and walls, are showing off gorgeous red, orange, gold and brown colors as the vines move toward winter nakedness. Bright red berries shine on the holly bushes and crabapple tree; the fothergilla’s colorful orange foliage gleams at twilight. I feel like applauding this color show as I sit in the gazebo sipping hot apple cider.
Finally, after a hard frost, each tree trunk is wrapped to guard against starving rodents’ sharp incisors. In other cruel winters they’d gnawed the bark of some lovely young tree and shrub trunks, killing them because I’d forgotten to do this last task.
The drained, main garden fountain has been covered in a huge green Christmas tree-shaped tarp. We’ve hung tiny colorful lights all over the structure. Even snow-glazed, they’ll twinkle all winter.
The trees are gradually going bare as autumn noisily passes wind. Raking away the mountain of tulip tree leaves will be a miserable task, as it drops them very late.
A few days ago the sky turned black: sleet fell in the dog park, making every human shiver and slink away. But I’m not depressed. Bryn-dog will make the new season much more fun! Until the first snow we’ll bike the lovely paved TART trail that winds along the Boardman Lake, then enjoy walking through our winter world. Finally, we’ll flop in front of the fire to gnaw bones, read books and listen to good music. And just maybe we’ll camp out overnight in the gazebo! (Its screened windows will be lined with Plexiglas, so we can do this.)
Winter has another, less obvious benefit: even with my new, easier-to-manage abbreviated garden, I welcome the rest.
My many massive hostas looked tattered; I cut them right down to the dirt. My big serrated kitchen bread knife made the job so fast and easy.
Every year I marvel at how much territory these splendid plants occupied. Now the large, empty spaces are shocking.
We moved quickly on to the 100 or so huge ostrich ferns and their tattered green fronds. A sharp tug separated broken stems from thick rhizome crowns, which protruded baldly above the soil, like lumpy brown molehills. (Their tall, dark chocolate-colored fertile fronds will remain upright all winter and then release their spores in spring.)
Roses along the front fence are still blooming! I’ll cut them back, but not until a hard frost. Dormant then, they won’t notice a thing. (If I did it now they’d wake from their drowsiness and spend their waning energy to grow more buds, weakening themselves, instead of settling down to sleep.)
I miss the gaily-colored front walk marigolds: nothing daunts them. With sun, food and occasional drinks these beauties bloom vigorously, pest and disease-free, for months.
Ditto for the still lovely annual geraniums. Those huge, glowing blooms just keep coming, but they were tossed, protesting, into the wheelbarrow anyway, for the same reason.
(I can’t bring myself to tear out the annual geraniums and petunias in the big stone planter on the front lawn yet. They’re so beautiful! Let them have another week...)
I stifled the urge to strangle the irritating spiderwort and instead dug most of it gone. During every growing season it rapidly makes more ‘worts,’ crowding out helpless neighbors – but darn it, those ball-sy blue flowers are so attractive!
(Patrol it to control it, girl!)
The spent sweet autumn clematis’s 40-foot long, stray tendrils drape disconsolately over the alley fence, and twine around the chocolate eupatorium, which is in full bloom now. Snow enhances clematis’s complicated skeletal vines in deep winter. In early spring I’ll chop each one almost to the ground. Two weeks later their annual massive growth toward perfumed glory will happen...
Siberian and variegated iris and the last remaining daylily leaves were trimmed very short. Withered lily stalks were cut to within two inches of the earth; their remaining ‘handles’ mark their location. The last Shasta daisy has faded to black; stems were cut to basal leaves.
But right this minute my favorite flower, the ubiquitous feverfew daisy, is blooming everywhere, as fresh now as it was in spring. Nothing bothers it! This single tough-as-nails plant wins my personal gold medal for beauty and persistence. It scatters itself here and there, and looks perfect practically forever.
“Why grow that weed?” people ask as they look down on its hundreds of beautiful flowers. My answer: “Because I simply love it.” I occasionally trim away old blooms and tired, too-long stem-stalks, leaving a low, compact bundle of green. In a few days fresh, tiny new daisies appear. These keep going ‘til snow does a good dump, which prompts it to pause, and settle down to wait... And wait...
Over seven months later, in spring, it blooms again.
Feverfew chooses where it wants to be, and I almost always agree. (It’s dead simple to remove if it grows somewhere that offends. Simply grab it and pull.)
The winter garden, with its clean, spare look, emerges. Giant, red/gold plumed miscanthus grasses and the huge yellow pyramidal chamaecyparis shrub now co-anchor the main secret garden. Boston ivy’s leaves, which smother the North Gate roof and walls, are showing off gorgeous red, orange, gold and brown colors as the vines move toward winter nakedness. Bright red berries shine on the holly bushes and crabapple tree; the fothergilla’s colorful orange foliage gleams at twilight. I feel like applauding this color show as I sit in the gazebo sipping hot apple cider.
Finally, after a hard frost, each tree trunk is wrapped to guard against starving rodents’ sharp incisors. In other cruel winters they’d gnawed the bark of some lovely young tree and shrub trunks, killing them because I’d forgotten to do this last task.
The drained, main garden fountain has been covered in a huge green Christmas tree-shaped tarp. We’ve hung tiny colorful lights all over the structure. Even snow-glazed, they’ll twinkle all winter.
The trees are gradually going bare as autumn noisily passes wind. Raking away the mountain of tulip tree leaves will be a miserable task, as it drops them very late.
A few days ago the sky turned black: sleet fell in the dog park, making every human shiver and slink away. But I’m not depressed. Bryn-dog will make the new season much more fun! Until the first snow we’ll bike the lovely paved TART trail that winds along the Boardman Lake, then enjoy walking through our winter world. Finally, we’ll flop in front of the fire to gnaw bones, read books and listen to good music. And just maybe we’ll camp out overnight in the gazebo! (Its screened windows will be lined with Plexiglas, so we can do this.)
Winter has another, less obvious benefit: even with my new, easier-to-manage abbreviated garden, I welcome the rest.