Fall

Autumn Oak




On Wednesday I was teaching my architecture students how to visualize within Photoshop, importing base images, adding found textures to planes, tweaking them with exposures, levels, brightness or what have you to give a convincing sense of light and space. Then I caught the sliver of light, in the cleft between the pull-down projector screen and a wall, a space which mirrored the architectural slit between A.M. Stern's high class money and Donald Trump's trash money, an aperture that sharply focused the park as a luxury, a painting, as it so often is, an image of security and status. Olmsted was a genius.



I am employed at an institution, just one block from the park, where it is seen fit to salary its presidential figurehead at one million, six-hundred thousand dollars a year, it is reasonable to renovate the figurehead's floor every five years, where the handbook unashamedly stipulates that deans and their superiors have all drinks paid at social and business functions, but cannot see to provide students who are mortgaging their futures at forty thousand a year with the proper staffing and equipment, nor offer any incentive to keep good people on their staff, and doesn't wish to consider the financial pressures of life in this city. The College has become part of the problem. Yesterday, I resigned.

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Last weekend, on my roundtrip to Boston, across the oak-filled coastal New England landscape, I was struck by the intensity of color of the oaks this autumn. I thought there was something unusual going on, and maybe there is, but I figured it a local phenomenon until I caught these oaks on Broadway. They are simply brilliant this year! I've always felt oaks were somewhat drably colored in the autumn, -russet, maroon, sienna and ochre. Yet not this year, not at all.


Have Garden, Will Travel


What is one to do with a garden full of plants when moving in the dead of winter? Certain plants can be given away, but one gets attached to others. My large-ish Hydrangea petiolaris, Grandma's tea rose, the iris, Dicentra eximia? I can dig out almost any plant in my garden at almost any time for transplant here, but they need to travel. Far. To a frozen earth zone. It will already be below freezing in a week's time there, it may never freeze here.

Some cuttings will fly in Betsy's suitcase on this Tuesday's trip, although it may well be too late for them. Mulch will be applied. Others will need to be nurseried until they can be collected, driven, and replanted. This may very well be in the heat of summer. Not ideal, but I've been lucky before.

It would seem, at the moment, that moving plants should be of the least concern for anyone leaving their position of ten years, moving twelve hundred miles away from friends, family, a network of colleagues, packing an apartment and two art studios, and going about shutting down one's life infrastructure (bank accounts, utility accounts, mail, and all else). The plants, then? Really?

Yes. Consider it a way to carry forward a piece of myself, something familiar, all component to an identity built over a decade in one place. I will not see the neighbors from the garden as they pass, but the plants will remind me of them. I will not be able to smell the sea or listen to the cacophony of the fall migration, but the plants will suggest it. The plants become a memory bank, or rather a trigger to it. They help establish myself in a new place. This is nothing new to me. I have perennial sunflowers from my garden in New Mexico, and fifty year old iris and roses from my Grandmother's house, and asters and primrose from a field in Maine. If this summer's herbicide spraying didn't kill them, I will move Mayapple saves, transplanted from Van Cortlandt Park, and Seaside Goldenrod from a pier in Red Hook.

When we move there are always things we are eager to leave behind. These things go without saying, all the better to help the forgetting. Carrying forward and leaving behind is inventive, recombinative action. We aim to change, so we change something.


Chrysanthemum (your choice, could be Dendranthemum) 'Sheffield Pink' is the jazz hands of the autumn garden. A few stolons of these will travel, but might not survive Zone 4b.



I have many asters, I cannot even recall which is which any more. Rooted cuttings will travel. New York Asters are good within Zone 4-8.



'Alma Potschke' will travel, although it has not done well for me here (NE Asters suffer disease), Zone 4-8.



Gaura blooms long, is graceful, but I have a hard time believing it will travel well. Maybe. Unlikely to survive zone 4b.



Clever aphids, so well-matching the colors of the lily stem, won't travel. The lilies will, however, be shipping out with Betsy on Tuesday.



The autumn red leaves of primrose will travel. Zone 4-8.



Heuchera, or Coral Bells as above, will travel. Zone 3-9.



Well, no, not these. Although we can bag up the begonia for winter storage.



Hmm. The 'New Dawn' climber is a beast. It's blooming again and can tolerate some shade, in this case, underneath the Zelkova. It will get pruned hard, and will travel, but when? May need to be nurseried until warmer weather returns.



The shrub rose? Sure, it blooms forever, but I've never gotten attached to it, so it won't travel.

Today I will head out to inventory the garden. Some plants will be missed, it is mid autumn after all. And soon, very soon, a plant giveaway will be necessary. Interested? Email me: nycgarden@gmail.com


Delicacy


I've nowhere well-lit, particularly on these darker, cloudy mornings to place a vase of flowers for a photograph. The kitchen stove always fares best as a table, and even then on top of a cast iron dutch oven. The light streams in from the window beside, a faint rectangle on the vase.


The leaves of the crimson Salvia elegans blacken at the freezer's edge, so I cut it. But the chrysanthemums, or what are they called these days (when I purchased one it was Chrysanthemum "Sheffield Pink"), are hardly not hardy. They will droop with the sop (that which makes it sopping, no? I will use it anyway), but afterward perk up. I've seen them through several snows. 


The irises, however, are delicate in cold and rain. I went out late last night to cut for the vase and now they glow and perfume our indelicate place.


Autumn



A breeze is blowing autumn down my street. The cosmos yellow, the dayflower are high, and the sun rakes long shadows across our walk. It always seems sudden.


Beautiful Beach Farm Days




The weather was perfect for beach farm work this weekend. I was there Saturday morning, the sun and soil still quite warm with a balance of cool breezes. The water has been shut off, so irrigation fixtures have been removed. The basil has given up the ghost, but I love the sweet herbal tea scent the dried plants emit every time I brush them.  I pulled broccoli for transplant or compost, then prepared beds for garlic cloves, tossing weeds, stones, grubs and wireworms. 

Test plots for several varieties of garlic.

Including these -the big mistake! Well, we'll see. I suppose there are several reasons not to plant Allium vineale in one's community garden plot. Several sources complain of rampant wild garlic that is impossible to eradicate. I wish to dispute this claim. They spread by seed and cloning -should I cut the flowers off they should be quite easy to control, right? Is it possible I have introduced some wild allium disease harbored by the field grown vineale? Possible, I suppose. I wonder how large these "wild" alliums will get when they are grown as individuals in a cultivated setting. Individuals I've seen growing in woodland settings or on the West Side Highway median were often quite large. These bulbs are good eating and worth a shot in the plot.

Some broccoli florets still producing.

Broccoli that has yet to head up has been transplanted to the cauliflower bed.

What got into this basil's stem?

And snap peas producing prodigiously now. Really good, cold air sweet.


Welcome Sun







 
Fallen limbs.



The hair cut hydrangea and our block's most red tree.













In the midst of the storm I went out to grab the iris. I guess we have two months extra winter this year. At least yesterdays freak weather has me feeling that way.




Snow Blow



Betsy has Marie's camera, worried that I was going to forget it for our trip to garlic land. So, I had to use our lousy camera for some shots of what to me is pretty miserable. The effect of the lousy camera is spot on - looks like miserable. I usually have flowers well into December, although some years only making it to Thanksgiving. To see so many irises succumb to snow is sad -how often does an iris see snow?

New Dawn has seen snow, or at least it's hips have. This weather not only ruined my plans to finish up garlic planting, but has also ruined so many asters, chrysanthemums, gaura, even cosmos and phlox still blooming. I'm all for the first snow, but this is a low blow.



Lord of the Land



I've received a couple of text messages concerned about the weather this coming weekend. Snow they say, freezing temperatures too. No matter say I, the garlic is fine and the weather on Sunday should be okay for planting. Yet, this morning, while preparing for work, I hear my landlord instructing one of his workers to cut back all the flowers. Wa?!? I race outside to see what is going on.

Yes, the asters and mums and sunflowers and gaura and cosmos have all leaned forward from the heavy rain, but also to beg for as much sun as possible. They extend out past the old iron fence at most 10 inches in spots. There is ample walkway for one, and what sour soul could demand that flowers be cut away so not one brushes the legs? 

Offended party now on the scene I want to know why he needs the flowers cut back to the fence line. Because of the snow, he says. So I can get the snow blower through, he says. THE SNOW BLOWER!?! It's only October I explain. I always cut back the plants after the first real freeze, which year in and out has tended to be anywhere from November to December. 

Fine, I say. But don't have your guy do it, I'll do it, like I always do long before it snows. I wrap the corner and see that his guy already did the side yard, hacking back the climbing hydrangea to the fence, trimming its graceful trusses to a jar head. Same for the cosmos, the chrysanthemums, and when he tells his guy to pull out my sunflowers I protested. Of course I want those, I planted them!

Snow. Yeah, right. 


The Road To Garlic




...is paved with gold.

I just got back from 3 intensive days of soil cultivation and garlic seed planting. Posting about that soon. I've heard some commentators say that the fall colors should be spectacular this year because of all the rain, but my eyes have always noted otherwise. Rain makes plain. My trip upstate, I think, bore this out. Generally duller coloring, and heavy on the yellows. Not much of that molten orange-red maple I love to see. But that's okay, I was busy, which has me just as pleased.


Morning Flowers





This is one place my mind has been lately. Actually, just passed that little plume of smoke rising above the fog -to the upper left. Having become an Eckerton Hill type garlic farmer over the last month has absorbed a lot of my time and attention. And then there are the three shows. I'll post an announcement for the Brooklyn exhibit as soon as the date and time are finalized. I made it to the beach farm yesterday to check on things before work -a post about that soon. In the meantime, I check on the flowers on my way out, happy that I planned well enough that they take care of themselves and are supposed to look somewhat messy. I read that we shouldn't serve two masters. How 'bout three?

I've barely been able to appreciate the Eupatorium this year. Where does the time go?

And the monkshood, Aconitum? This is all that remains of what was a lush stand earlier this year. I think it was killed by cats. How, you ask? I always find a cat laying at night in the spot in which it used to grow. Compaction, warming the soil, who knows. I also think, now, that people had sex against our building which trampled and killed the bleeding hearts and ferns that were doing exceptionally well until then. What led me to this conclusion? The napkins.

The cosmos ask for nothing, but an occasional deadheading.

We have lots of irises coming up now -much, much earlier than last year.


Stick your nose in there, it's goooood.

Aster time in full swing. These in the side yard amongst the smart weed.

But seeds drifting to the center tree pit has created the real show. All new this year, these asters filled in like weeds, but only this center tree pit. Must be something to do with the dynamics of wind, seed dispersal, and the stoop.

Sedum's second bloom. With bees.

New Dawn has had an exceptionally long and floriferous second bloom. Must've been all that rain in August and September.


Praise Borage



I did not spend the time during this very busy week getting decent photos of the borage that has so artfully returned, an encore performance that I think is rather striking for its season. It is so wonderful to see plants simply turning their noses up at the cold weather and flourishing.  Best of all is that I had little to do with it -the borage simply re-seeded itself from the spring flowering. I pulled all that remained sometime this summer, after deadheading and cutting back to nothing worth keeping. Now I see that I should pull them right after they begin to decline and wait for the seeds to sprout for the fall display.

Ha! I truly believe this is the first time I uploaded a blurry photo to the blog. 


Beach Farm: Week 13



Snap peas in the raking light of late afternoon.

Hot peppers, still ripening on the plant.

This last broccoli, in its netting, looking to me, rather foolishly, like Goya's 'Third of May.'

The netting worked to keep the cabbage worms out -you can see one here. Yet it did little for the white flies and aphids, bundled up in the flower buds. I snacked on the super sweet stems, the rest too bugged to even consider.

The new broccoli, which I haven't covered yet. 

The arugula.

Mixed greens, poorly seeded.

And the collards, still going strong, still uneaten.

I also harvested some eggplant, little and probably full of seeds, but a surprise. Also, the remaining tomatoes, and then pulled the plants, and weeded. From here, it's all come what may.


Front Yard Finale



The front garden as it now stands.

I'm curious about the chrysanthemums that are darker in the shade. Those to the right are in sun, those to the left get much less sun because they are behind the rose.

The pink gaura is blooming again, one here, one there.

It's a long wait for the pineapple sage, Salvia elegans. First bloom the last week of October.

These asters are having their moment.

Hidden within the blast is another type of aster.

The bees love these.

The butterflyweed, Asclepias tuberosa, is finally sending off it's seeds like so many baby spiders.

Boltonia, another aster really, is the last to bloom. Just this week it has begun, one by one.

The Aster 'alma potschke' is wrapping up its season, along with the Eupatorium. Much like me, who's thinking about forgetting the garden for awhile. I think I'm ready for winter. Bring it on.



This Morning...


...I simply felt how low the sun is. It sparks a mini-depression, an alert, to summer's end. Get outside, man! Get outside. Autumn will come early this year.

Morning tigers sit watch.

The last 'New Dawn' blooms.

The sunflower begins its autumnal celebration.

The sun now low enough for Monkshood, Aconitum, to accept it.

Hips blush under cooler nights.

Morning cosmos, cheerful as my wife.

And the dusky purple-blue of the perennial Ageratum, Eupatorium ceolestinum, a switch flipped, how fast, how fast.


New York State Frost Dates



If you are wondering "when is that last or first frost date here in NYC," below are two maps,  courtesy of the wonderful people at Cornell University, of first and last frost dates of the New York State season. These frost dates are "roundabout," so it is always wise to follow the weather when thinking of planting tender plants or deciding whether or not to harvest those last few tomatoes. Any given year we can push or pull these frost dates. Looking at those dates tells me we in NYC are very lucky indeed.



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