The Autumn Garden

 

"Autumn is a time of sweet disorder and permissible procrastination" - Allen Lacy

Often, autumn is seen as a time in the garden full of chores - raking the leaves, tidying up the perennial beds, cutting back annuals, planting bulbs for spring, taking care of the tools and putting everything away. In short, bringing the gardening year to an end.

Luckily, in this part of the country fall still fills the garden with a lot of life. After a couple light rain falls the garden seems to wake up after the summer heat, taking a deep breath and pushing all its glory that autumn is famous for.

"Roger's Red", a California native grape pictured above, displays brilliant shades of red, winding through our old windmill and being reflected in the water left from the rain in our fire pit. It is a stunning show that takes my breath away every time I look at it.

The last tomatoes need to be harvested. It wasn't a good tomato year for me and most of my tomatoes I ate right from the bush. The few sunflowers I had are gone, but I had cut off the seed heads and attached them to the now orphaned tomato cages for the birds to enjoy. 

Fall is our major planting season, when perennials, shrubs and trees are put in the ground so that they can get etsablished over the winter. Bulbs for spring flowering plants will go in the ground in December. I don't have many this year - just a few tulips and a big bag of daffodils. I hope that some of this year's tulips will come back next spring, but it is not a given because we don't have very cold winters and tulips need quite a chill. If we do get a lot of frosty nights chances are much better.

Most of my perennials were planted in the fall and many of them come back reliably year after year. Like these sages in the front - pineapple sage and Mexican bush sage - that make up one of my favorite color combinations, red and purple. They are joined by salvia "Indigo Spires" and in the background you can see the loaded Pendolino olive tree. All of these sages are cut back to the ground in the winter.

The yellow of the swamp sunflower (Helianthus angustifolius) is glowing for about two weeks in the autumn garden until it fades again. It's like a light that has been switched on. After our very dry spring and summer I was surprised how well it performed in October. The chrysanthemum is still flowering in all its beauty and such a delightful spot.

Almost two weeks ago we had torrential rain - much needed, but so much water came down that some areas were flooded (thankfully not in our corner). Within 24 hours we received almost 8 inches of rain. Since then it has rained on and off with sunny balmy days in between. While the rain did help the garden a lot, it unfortunately hasn't put a dent in the drought - for the drought to end we need a lot more rain and the prognosis for that is not very good. It's a La Niña year which means more rain for the Northern part and less rain for the Southern part. While officially being Northern, we're kind of in the middle when it comes to these weather patterns, and I hope we will get more of the rain that is supposed to fall in the North. Fingers crossed - we need it.

The most stunning plant in my garden at the moment - beside the "Roger's Red" vine - is the Chinese pistache that I planted seven or eight years ago. Every year its show is more brilliant than the year before - or perhaps this is only my imagination. I love love love this tree.

The leaves of the elderberry - Sambucus mexicana, a California native - are already gone, but the birds love the berries. They will be a good food source for them during the winter.

I shouldn't forget who actually rules the garden - it's these two. Somehow they have decided that this garden is the place where they like to be. They follow me around when I make my rounds through the garden and love to soak up the sun on the warm soil.