I looked down at a leaf on the playground the other day after a rainstorm (another one with wildly intense winds is raging at the moment, howling down the chimney and making me wish I’d taken more and better photos of fall tree foliage, since tomorrow I imagine everything will be on the ground!) and what did I see?
Or, rather, should I say, “Whooooo did I see?!”
Yeah, OK, I don’t seem to be done with Halloween yet. Wonder if the wind is sending any of our tiny pumpkins flying right now?
Our early fall in Seattle was lovely – warm, sunny days and cool nights, perfect for easing the garden gently into its winter lull while preserving some of the most stunning colors and extending the food crops just a bit longer. My fall harvest of raspberries was even more pathetic than the spring one, so I might have to rethink their placement or figure out how to urge them on better next year. But the baby alpine strawberries and bigger ever-bearing ones hung on for a last little flush.
There are never more than a few out there at a time and my daughter gets most (okay, all) of them, unless they have already been discovered by a squirrel or bird (why do they always just peck one hole and then leave it?? So wasteful, those wild creatures!). This was the last handful, picked a few weeks ago, and they disappeared down the hatch in about 30 seconds.
There are still fresh berries in the grocery store, tiny portions packed in plastic and shipped up from California, prices too exorbidant to bear. For now, these precious jewels will be just a memory, and something to look forward to again next summer.
(PS Oh, wrote this last week and just noticed today that there are a few more ripe berries! One final gift of summer, but then that will be it.)
Take a few pumpkins from garden, grocery store and/or pumpkin patch:
Add spooky critters:
Mix in scary-looking plants:
Add a dash of borrowed costume finery:
Stir it all together in a bubbling cauldron and what have you got? A Happy Halloween! Hope everyone has a fun weekend.
I was never that into the game of tag as a kid. I hated being “it” and there always seemed to be an element of social aggression in that and many other playground games. My daughter must be a chip off the old block, since she doesn’t like these sorts of games either, and in fact often decides to opt out of playing them.
So when I was first “tagged” in the blogosphere, I totally flubbed it. There was only friendliness meant, but I couldn’t figure out if I wanted to do it and pass it on, hemmed and hawed and delayed, and in the end just lamely replied via a comment (sorry, Susan of The Bicycle Garden!) This time, I am going to do it right. Well, sort of. It seems that I am never quite able to play by the rules…
So, thank you to Aerie-el from Gardener’s Roost for inviting me to join in the game of “Photo Tag.” The rules are to go to the 4th folder in your computer where you store your pictures, select the 4th picture in that folder, explain the picture, then tag four people to do the same.
My digital photos are stored in alphabetically-ordered folders and are a big bone of contention in my household – there are way too many of them on the poor old computer and it’s getting very slow and sad as a result. Sorting through and archiving them is a big project for a quiet day that never seems to happen. I wonder if anyone else is in the same boat here? Digital cameras make it so easy to accumulate a frighteningly large number of images – I need to be more ruthless with my deletions but so far I’m not doing too well.
The 4th folder in my picture files is from October of 2006, when my folks made a long-anticipated trip to Italy and France and we went over to their place to do a few house and yard chores while they were away (kind of a miracle, given than the help almost always flows the other direction!). One of the things they asked us to do was to pick up and sort by variety the windfall apples that had accumulated since their departure. Our daughter, 3 1/2 years old at the time, got totally into the apple retrieval job – she was small enough to fit under the dwarf trees’ branches and could reach apples that were hard for the big people to get to. So, in the 4th photo of my “Apple Pick-up” folder, here she is all bundled up on a crisp fall day, about to go get another armload of fruit.
(Note the “footies” on the apples, a very labor-intensive but usually successful pest-protection method they started using a few years ago and that I have mentioned in a few previous posts.)
As for the final rule of this game of tag, I am going to steal an idea from another commenter on Aerie-el’s site and not designate the next four folks. If you have read this far and would like to participate, please consider yourself tagged!
The tree that’s been on my must-have list for the longest time is a Japanese maple, or acer palmatum. I need to find the perfect home for one, or maybe a couple, and care for the tree(s) well enough so that they will survive. I have been afraid of the virus they can fall prey to (verticillium wilt), plus it’s just so hard to decide which one(s) to get. Should it be ‘Sango-kaku,’ with its brilliant yellow leaves and dramatic red bark? Or a red-purple ‘Rubrum’? Or how about ‘Linearilobum,’ with its finger-like leaves and multi-hued fall glory?
In Japanese culture, “Momiji-gari” or hunting/viewing maple trees is a tradition almost as revered as the springtime ritual of traveling to view cherry blossoms. This site, Way of Maple, promotes the aestetic prunining and enjoyment of the species, and provides a translation of one of the many Japanese poems celebrating the tree:
By the wind storm’s blast
From Mimuro’s mountain slopes
Maple’s leaves are torn,
Which turn Tatsuta River
Into a rich brocade.
-Monk Noin
Japanese maples are popular in Seattle, so I decided to go on my own little “maple hunt” one day last week and see how many I could find, especially in the parking strips of my neighborhood. Turns out there were a lot! I will share some with you below, and save a few for another time, perhaps when the leaves are all gone and we need a few bright colors to get us through the winter blahs.
I’ve been frantically working (like a squirrel in late autumn? Hm, maybe Dr. Destructo and I have more in common than I thought!) on a couple of bigger posts but nothing is quite ready to put up yet. Today is busy, no time to write, so all I have to offer is this photo from a recent walk.
I hope this weekend brings you time to commune with your garden, or at least a moment to think about it and plan for next year!
I had been thinking the fall colors here in Seattle seemed more stunning than usual this year, and it turns out I was not wrong. Whenever there’s a noticeable change in how the plants behave, I start to worry and fret about global warming, but in this case it’s aprobably just a minor pattern shift, nothing to worry about.
The Seattle Weekly had a squib in their most recent issue about this local phenomenon, an unseasonably dry fall with warmer days and cooler nights than usual, plus fewer early-season windstorms to knock all that gorgeous foliage to the ground. Since there is no link to the article on the Weekly’s site, I will quote a portion of it here for those interested in the science behind fall leaf color beauty:
“The brightest foliage colors come when the nights are cool and the days are warm, explains atmospheric sciences professor Mark Stoelinga. This “diurnal effect” stimulates the chemical process that turns leaf color. Clouds, which we usually have plenty of this time of year, hamper this effect because they act like a blanket at night, stopping heat from radiating upward, and a barrier during the day, preventing the sun from permeating downward.”
Of course, now that we’ve had a few of those wind storms, I’m regretting not having spent more time walking around looking at and taking pictures of all the lovely leaves. Oh well, even on the ground, they’re quite something.
Who knows when we’ll get a fall like this again, but I’m glad to have seen the beauty that it produced. Did anyone else notice any odd weather changes this autumn in your region?
… parking strip gardens, the ostensible focus of this blog! The other day on a walk, it was also for
pyrecantha berries,
pampas grass, aka feather grass, aka Cortaderia selloana, which can be invasive in some areas,
pathway,
palm tree,
planter boxes,
and pebbles, massed in a flowing “river” under a stunning Japanese maple.
Can you tell I’ve been working with my 5 year old on her letters?!
My daughter, who has been home sick from school the past two days, was sitting with me on the couch late this afternoon when she pointed up into our cedar tree and said, “Mommy, what’s that up there?” I didn’t see where she was pointing at first. Then I saw him, Public Enemy #1 in my garden.
I said to my daughter, “Good eye, sweetie. Do you see what he’s eating?” And she said, “An apple from the neighbor’s house?” Bingo! I guess he read my previous post about how much it annoys me that he’s messing with all my seedlings and bulbs when there are unused apples just two doors down. It was getting pretty dark so the shots are a little fuzzy, but you can see in this next one that he’s looking right at us with his beady little eyes, bold as brass. No fear. The perfect supervillain!
Oh, and every supervillain needs a name, right? I’m leaning towards Dr. Destructo but will be happy to accept alternate suggestions.
Walking up to the local elementary school to cast my ballot today, I decided to look for election signs in the neighborhood’s parking strips. Our blue block in a blue neighborhood in a blue city in a blue state is not big on signs, usually. I have a theory that my parents’ town, which seems to breed these signs like wildfire, has more because the parties are more evenly split there, and they feel like they have to compete for attention.
In any case, I did my best to be non-partisan in my search but completely failed. This is big Obama country, what can I say!
There was somewhat of a wind storm last night, knocking a few of the signs askew and downing many leaves. Nobody had time to rake them up in the rush to vote and head to work this morning, so the leaf carpets were pretty thick and many were quite beautiful. I especially liked this one, which I think might be yellow cherry and purple plum:
We have a big Mass Transit measure on the ballot. Hard to say how it will fare – many of us would agree that we need to get out of our cars more, but some folks will probably vote their pocketbook in this trying economic climate. Fingers crossed it will pass, we really need it here in Seattle, where too many of us drive everywhere (guilty!).
After I’d voted (old-fashioned in-person paper ballot), I kept walking to see what more was out there on this gloomy-weather but news-exciting day. This tree really knocked me out, not sure if it was a type of maple, but it really looked as if it was on fire!
This combination cracked me up, kind of a segue between Halloween and Election Day:
I know some people think that politics have no place in a gardening blog. I just couldn’t bring myself to write a totally non-related post today. I hope that whatever you believe, you cast your vote! I feel like if I don’t vote, I have no right to complain. 
Happy November 4!
Oh, one last sign, the only home-made one I saw:
