FALL COLOR V

This lovely lavender dame’s rocket (Hesperis matronalis) has been blooming since April. In July as it began to lay down slowly on the surrounding perennials I thought I should cut it back, but then forgot. By August I was wondering, “How long will this damn dame keep blooming.” The flower spikes were stretching nearly 8 feet by then. We’ve finally had a killing frost, 22º. Much was blackened and flattened over night. All the leaves of the empress trees dropped green. There was ice in the watering can. But the little, well not so little , dame’s rocket just keeps on blooming

FALL COLOR IV

A few night s ago I had dinner at a Japanese restaurant that I hadn’t dined at in years. It actually had changed hands and names several times since I was last there back in the early 90s. It’s in an odd little corner of Seattle and a basement at that. But when you enter this finely laid out and decorated subterranean restaurant, you feel like you’re in Japan. Well, I feel like I’m in Japan, though I’ve never been to Japan and don’t really know what being in Japan feels like. But the atmosphere of this restaurant, which has gone through some changes since I was there last, still has a quintessentially Japanese feel. At the end of the small front dining room, which used to be the bar twenty, thirty years ago, is the beautiful autumnal mural. Japanese maples in reds, oranges and yellows seem unusual, most Japanese restaurants focus on bamboo or spring and cherry blossoms for their decor. These maples frame a plunging narrow water fall now covered by Samsung large screen T.V. The waitress caught me taking this picture, looked puzzled and then apologized, “ It’s a shame we put a T.V. in the middle of that beautiful painting.” I just smiled.

FALL COLOR III

This weekend we had a sunny day. Michael and I were rushing around the garden gathering the last of the gatherables before the next swath of rain passed through. A few pears, a few pumpkins. And even some beans. I bought the seed for this yellow romano bean in Lucca, Italy a few years ago. It’s called Meraviglia di Venezia, the Marvel of Venice, for a reason. The first year we grew it we was totally disappointed with it’s slow growth and reluctance to produce. But then late in the season, when the rest of the beans had given up it began to develop these beautiful and tender yellow pods. Again this year the late harvest was marvelously rewarding. Its a bean we will grow again and again.

FALL COLOR II

Last weekend Michael and I drove to Boise, Idaho for his parents Golden Wedding Anniversary. It’s a beautiful drive, that we take frequently through the Cascades, the sage lands of the Yakima valley and the Blue Mountains of Eastern Oregon. This was the first autumn trip we made. I was surprised by the colors.The cotton woods in the river valleys were golden, with that yellow between egg yolk and lemon rind that we call golden. The slopes were reddened with sumac and service berry. Yet the dominant vegetal color beneath the clear blue October skies was beige. Almost a non-color in its ubiquity and neutrality. The grasses were beige and every form of herbaceous growth, the flower head of shrubs like the rabbit bush (Chrysothamnus naseosus) above and the stubbly fields of harvested wheat. It’s an affable if dead color, not cheery like spring time pinks, or bold like autumn gold, but valuable and calming. Or maybe it was just the long ride in this sublime beige landscape that calmed.

FALL COLOR

Fall is creeping up on us slowly. Certainly the temperatures have changed, the clouds are back, the rains have begun on schedule. It’s the colors that are being shy. The grand autumnal colors, gold, orange, red, are just starting to peek out here and there. Sometimes it does that here. Sort of like spring is a prolonged parade from February to June. I have been taking pleasure in other colors as I wait for Fall’s triumph. Like anemones and aster. And the leaves of this purple brussels sprout lacquered with glare.

SITE UNSEEN

Last weekend Michael and I headed to Mount Rainier for a 3 day weekend. We were celebrating Michael’s birthday and escaping a myriad of projects around the house. Though the weather forecast was mixed, as it has been a lot lately, what we got was foggy, cloudy, rainy, actually any meteorological phenomenon that reduces visibility and gets you wet. Still, we had a beautiful time. “Invisibility is its own natural wonder,” writes the novelist Joyce Kornblatt. Certainly over the weekend as foggy distances gently opened and shrunk like schools of jelly fish, played peek-a-boo like a 2 year old, or teased like Sally Rand with her fans, we were continually awed by the beauty. And there was a certain peacefulness, which we didn’t realize we were seeking, that came over us, and would have been impossible if the sun was shining and the views gargantuan and triumphant as a brass band at Christmas.

TULIPTIME?

It seems an odd time of year to be selling tulips. There are sunflowers, asters and mums ripe for the picking. I wonder where these six-petalled beauties are coming from. Somewhere below the equator where it is spring? From some strange complex of coolers and hothouse nearby where spring could be electronically recreated? It makes you wonder how they can get them to us so cheaply.
David Perry and Debra Prinzing are writing a book about sustainable, local flower growing called A Fresh Bouquet. Their blog is full of beautiful photos and interesting interviews with growers around the country involved in local sustainable flower culture. I’d be visiting it know except my bulb orders just arrived and I have hundreds of tulip bulbs to unpack. Giant Darwin Hybrids, Greggii Hybrids and Fosteriana Hybrids for my clients. And a few species tulips for me.
Maybe September is tulip time after all.