End-of-Season Report

Day 12: It's the time of the year when we're working on writing those end-of-season reports, and the statistics from my garden are in. I am happy to announce that with one exception, everything I planted last spring and summer has survived and appears to be sufficiently established to weather the winter. The one fatality was a maidenhair fern which was rather feeble at the time of purchase. The second one is doing fine.

This mum wintered over from 2015 in the strawberry jar despite numerous hard freezes. While it's not the first mum I've had return from the dead the following year, it happens infrequently enough to be notable. It provided me with colour throughout the summer, bushing out over the sedums which otherwise fill the planter. It will be interesting to see if I get a third year from it. For a buck and a half, that can't be beat!

Mum's The Word

Day 322: Every year when autumn's early hints put a blush on the vine maples and a suggestion of coolness in the morning air, I buy a chrysanthemum for my garden. I lean rather heavily toward the dark red/maroon end of the spectrum as a general rule, but since my rich purple one wintered over in the strawberry jar and has been a mass of blooms all summer, I decided to go with orange. I didn't get just one. I got three. Okay, they were small (4" pots) and inexpensive, so I figured I could splurge. I bedded them in a windowbox-style planter which had formerly held nasturtiums, and positioned it on the step outside my kitchen door. The colour is so festive, and mums are easy-care plants which will reward you even through light frosts. I'm not ready to give up on summer yet, but oh, cooler afternoons are very welcome after our last interval of hot days!

Are You My Mummy?

Day 325: Look what followed me home! As much as I would like to provide pollinators with their favourite foods, the tall sedum in the strawberry jar just outside my kitchen door was creating a scenario for a medical emergency with the number of honeybees it was attracting. I'm allergic, and more severely so to honeybees than any other species of stinger. I was courting disaster every time I went out to pick tomatoes, my backside to the bees only a foot or so distant. I knew it would only be a matter of time before I got stung if I didn't remove it, so on a cool morning a few days ago before the sun had risen, I cut the stalks back to the soil. Today, I dug out the roots and replaced them with this beautiful purple chrysanthemum.

Over the years, I've had mums winter over. It doesn't often happen that way, but on one notable occasion, I kept a dark red one for several years with no exceptional care. This year, I have a number of new plants which will require mulching, so I may just toss a handful of straw over Mummy if I have some left over.

Sunflower Stitchery

Day 365: My birds are grand little gardeners. They've planted millet and milo throughout the flower beds, and I never know where sunflowers may pop up. Burdened by the recent rain, this one was nodding close to the ground, so I supported it with chrysanthemums for the photo which, as you can see, has been processed to give it the look of a piece of framed needlework. Now I find myself wishing I still had the old PC Stitch program on this machine so I could turn it into counted cross-stitch!

My regular readers will notice that the lead-in says that this is Day 365 of 365 Caws' Year Four, and I find myself having to make an admission of fault. 365 Caws began on October 14, 2010, and at the end of the second year (if memory serves), the count was off by ten days. I glossed over it at the time, figuring that nobody was really keeping track, but it bothered me. Somehow, though, I've managed to lose another four days. Therefore, from now through October 13, I will be posting "make-up" entries so I can start with a fresh slate on the 14th.

Spoon Among Mums

Day 359: Each autumn, I am tempted by the displays of chrysanthemums which populate the entryways of all the home-and-garden stores. Occasionally, I break down and buy one, figuring that a few short weeks of fall color is worth a couple of bucks. This year, I got a surprise. My 'mum from last year sprouted from the root and burgeoned into a good-sized plant, even crowding the Osteospermum ("Spoon Flower") adjacent to it. Now that's a good return on your dollar!

A Corner Of Color

Day 323: In a day when "clashing colors" meant that you didn't wear green with blue, red with orange or purple, grey with brown, my mother's sage but somewhat contradictory advice was to take direction from Mother Nature. If colors did not appear together naturally, they were verboten. I promptly went out and found many examples of red flowers with orange centers, brilliantly blue blossoms rising over vivid green foliage and verdant mosses growing on the grey bark of the alders so prevalent in the Pacific Northwest. Mother Nature, it seemed, was ready to excuse any shades I cared to combine. Soon, the aesthetics were to change. With the advent of the Hippie Era, clashing colors became de rigueur, but the trend was for unnatural shades, the "day-glo" palette. With the exception of eyeball-bursting chartreuse, the hippie hues offended my sensibilities.

Today, I fall back on my garden for fashion counseling. It trends toward the jewel tones, assiduously avoids pink, mixes anything else while being based primarily in greens. It does not matter if it runs down a bit at the heel, is rumpled or has a few patches. It's comfortable in its loose fit, rather old-fashioned, and most importantly, it's a happy, riotous rainbow from top to bottom with no concern for that silly idea that any two colors might clash.