Frost!

Fall harvest: yellow plum tomatoes cherry tomatoes, red peppers, broccoli shoots, heritage tomatoes...

Frost blasts tender leaves and vines, turns them from green, growing things into black, dried-up wilting things. But also, when it’s not a hard frost, it will enliven other growing things, spark their heat-weary growth, cause them to rebloom and make their colors more brilliant. 

My Icelandic poppies have started to bloom again, like bright stars in the garden. The gladiolus are brighter than ever, and the fava beans are relieved to have better temperatures for producing fruit, the only bean I know that likes cool air, cool soil. Apples are much tastier after a good frost; the pumpkins are ripening, my pears are, some of them, ready to pick:  I have one perfect pear sitting here on the plate next to my computer.  And fortunately, my peppers and tomatoes were left untouched, and I was able to pick two red peppers this afternoon, which is a minor miracle in my cold-pocket environment.

Pears!

It would seem like this time of year there would be less to do in the garden, but in fact, there’s a kind of big push right now to get done all that can be done. New perennials need to be planted, but not too soon or they’ll exhaust their roots or bulbs putting out foliage now, and not too late or the ground will be frozen.  Weeds are busy making seeds as fast as they can manage, and these need to be yanked and composted to save woe and work in the spring. The day after the frost – September 19 – I needed to pull out the blasted green bean plants and pull off the still very tasty beans for one last meal, before stuffing the compost bins full of the plant detritus. Carrots and other root vegetables need to be harvested before a serious frost – or insects gorging before winter – eat up their foliage and make the roots harder to find. Pumpkins and winter squashes will need to be brought in as soon as the vines are completely dead. I leave those that have a few untouched leaves on them to produce flowers for the bees for as long as possible.

Post-frost pumpkin flower

Pears need to be checked daily for readiness to be picked, as do the tomatoes, and scarlet runner beans.  I’ll need to enlist the help of the Tall Dude soon – I can’t reach most of the pears this year. Pots need to be emptied, dried, and stored with tomato cages and other garden paraphernalia in the shed. Some soft paths need more cedar chips; the new wind thingy needs a pebble bed; raspberry canes need to be cut back, and the new raspberries need some serious weeding. And the fall raspberries – ours are a yellow variety that this fall are huge and luscious – also need to be checked daily for handfuls of tasty fruit that sometimes need to be wrestled away from the stinkbugs or wasps.

Fall raspberries

And even while the garden is slowly denuded of its warm-weather plants, there are still spots of incredible beauty that we need to pause and admire and sniff, sniff, sniff.

I’ve been making bouquets of amaranth flowers and small sunflowers the past two weeks, putting them into quart canning jars, and giving them away to strangers and friends. The amaranth leaves, an incredible burgundy color, were partly hit by the frost, and a stronger frost will destroy the flowers – so, surprise bouquets. Mostly I don’t see who comes across them and carries them home, but one lady to whom I gave one of the bouquets I was carrying in the back of the car, at the post office, gave me a hug – an excellent and unexpected payment. I’ve given away about nine bouquets  to unknown recipients so far and it makes me happy to think nine people had a reason to smile unexpectedly during the last couple of horrible weeks.

Love Lies Bleeding

I also found a home for my gigantic coral Love Lies Bleeding plants, which self-seeded from last year’s crop. The café downstairs from my office in White River Jct. has taken these 5’7” giants and is using them as decoration instead of cornstalks – and the nice thing is, these massive flowers can be dried and will be attractive for many months. I literally had to saw them down – the stalk s are 2+ inches in diameter – and driving them to the Upper Valley was interesting. The stalks  and green leaves lounged across the passenger seat with their feet in a bucket of water, and the long, long flower cascades draped across the back seat, as if I had a mermaid in the car with me. Only two would fit at a time – the last two will go with me tomorrow.

French pumpkin hanging from a compost bin

The hardy hibiscus and Speedwell Veronica are in full, beautiful bloom, and the autumn clematis is spread across a large section of the back fence, and in fragrant, wonderful bloom. This plant has small white flowers and looks like a white froth on the fence; its fragrance hits you as you get near. The Bells of Ireland I planted this summer – an annual that I’ve never planted before – didn’t get very tall, but, oh my, the fragrance! As they’re tender, I’ve brought most of them in and I’ve been thrilled to discover that the fragrance lasts for some time even once dried. And my scented gladioulus are also filling my dining room with perfume. These plants look wholly unlike the glads we all know – they have graceful swooping necks with star-shaped white flowers that look like swan’s necks and heads before opening, and a maroon star-shaped marking on the inside. 

Autumn clematis

My calla lilies have migrated back indoors, and the bay tree and kaffir lime and not-hardy hibiscus have moved temporarily to the back wart, where it’s a little more protected and a little warmer. They’ll be coming in under protest soon – probably this weekend, whether they like it or not, as will the rosemary plant. I still need to put the miniature rose into the garden somewhere – it turns out that often they’ll grow in place and return next year – and I’m busy making and placing identifying plant markers so I don’t pull things I shouldn’t in the spring or plant new perennials on top of old ones. And that means I spend a fair amount of time wandering around the garden with my ineptly-created map, wondering out loud: is that the heart-leafed bergenia, or is that it over there, and which of the three is the blue-eyed…whatchamacallit? And where, exactly, did the fritillaria that emerged this spring actually emerge? Why didn’t I mark it then? And the alliums, too? And the tulips?

And, oh look – the dill has self-seeded and some of it’s up high enough to pull and use as dill weed – a bonus fall treat. And the Eygyptian onions, which I totally pulled up and ate a bunch of and then replanted many of the bulbs, is up and getting big again.

One of the giant coral Love Lies Bleeding - Charley Freiberg photo

When I look out the window now at the back forty, all the big  sunflower heads are bowed with the weight of their seeds which are ripening; a few tall – 7’ and higher – amaranth still glow burgundy; the maple trees at the edge of the field are in full, blazing scarlet and poppy; I can see some pathways I couldn’t see for many weeks; the blueberry leaves are turning bright red, and there are still piles of bricks and rocks and rock-like chunks that need placing in several projects I’ve been working on this summer. And several more projects I’ve been planning but waiting for cooler weather to work on. 

And so much still to do…and isn’t that a perfect blessing?

For the blog, 26 September 2019

Most photos Deb Marshall

Many colors of fall Bachelor's Buttons