REPORTER FILE PHOTO
It’s time to put the garden bed to bed.
I write this in the midst of a burst of summer, not fall, weather. It’s true that it gets darker earlier, but that really is little help to a plant trying to go dormant. That plant needs cooling breezes and there aren’t any. And none due for a week or more. Global warming seems to have arrived.
REPORTER FILE PHOTO
Milky white pendant flowers.
Okay, Newbies, just checking. You did do your final feeding a few weeks ago, yes? Good. Now is the time not to feed, to allow each plant to do that which comes naturally to them, that is, to begin to become dormant, to ready themselves for the winter. (more…)
REPORTER FILE PHOTO
Two arms full of these, please.
This is the week of the summer, actually one of two, because it’s true about next week as well, when I don’t have enough vases, despite the fact that I just bought a nifty tray, tiny little vases, eight of them, at Shelter Island Florist. All of my lilies, another late flush of roses, hydrangea still blooming… what’s a gardener to do? I can’t leave them in the cutting garden. For what? To bloom where no one will see them? That’s no way to treat a plant in bloom. So indeed, I must cut them and bring them in and I have. Running out of table space, I’ve taken some up to my bedroom as well.
CAROL GALLIGAN PHOTO
What I won’t be having this October.
I’ve been quite remiss this season, indulging in reminiscences as well as plant histories, instead of doing what I think I’m supposed to be doing, which is to coax, harry, and generally assail you all into completing the chores you should have completed. But that stops right now. We need both to look ahead and behind and check ourselves. Have we been doing what we should have been doing? Are we where we should be, given the time of year? Let’s check.
REPORTER FILE PHOTOS
The Island has been bursting with the colors of spring and summer thanks to forsythia.
The hands of the Great Powers have painted the Island yellow, with a dash of pink here and there and a lovely sheen overhead of bright spring green. I have to try hard to watch the road, keeping my car in one piece, everything is so lovely to look at. I know it will fade eventually but this first flush of color after the boring sameness of winter feels like a gift.