The fall crocus is blooming

Jill Severn

The first fall crocuses are blooming. And as George Walter noted in his column last week, the fall bird migration is well underway – in fact, it started weeks ago.

Next weekend is Labor Day, and Harbor Days will fill the Budd Bay waterfront with tall ships, tugboats, and vendors selling earrings and art. Then kids will go back to school, the days will get shorter faster.

After a long hot summer, there is a lot about fall that many of us now crave: cooler weather, colorful leaves, pumpkins, and school sports, to name a few. Just this week, people just about broke out the champagne to celebrate even the lightest, briefest rain showers.

But some of us have divided minds. Yes, we’re happy to see a little rain, yet we still regret summer’s retreat. We feel disoriented by cloudy skies after so many weeks of full sun. We feel abandoned by the birds who’ve left for warmer climates. For us, the nearness of fall is a looming season of loss.

For gardeners, the transition from summer to fall means saying goodbye to the spent pea vines, the gone-to-seed lettuce, and many of the exhausted flowers of the summer. These are all plants we’ve nurtured and loved. Sometimes, pulling them up and throwing them in the compost pile is not an easy goodbye. They gave their all to us. And the little lecture we give ourselves about the rotting compost nourishing next year’s plants provides barely enough restitution for their loss.

So for gardeners, the advent of fall requires some mental adjustments.

One is to remind ourselves to look forward rather than back. Think of all the plants that are just now coming into their own: in the flowerbeds, asters, chrysanthemums and dahlias, to name just a few. In the vegetable garden, late plantings of greens, beans, potatoes, and every kind of squash are still to come, along with the much-celebrated deluge of tomatoes. This is a lot to be happy about. We’d be fools not to enjoy it all every minute of every day – or at least every minute we spend in the garden or eating from the garden.

Then we can turn our thoughts to next year, and what we will do differently and better. It’s time to make a searching and fearless inventory of all our garden mistakes and failures so we don’t repeat them.

My first lesson from this year’s list of mistakes: Read seed packages more carefully, so I don’t plant eight- or ten-feet tall pea vines on a four-foot wire fence. That was a rookie mistake, very embarrassing.

Second, plant those tender and wonderful French bush beans further apart so they’re easier to harvest.

Third – and this is something I’ve been telling myself for years – quit fighting the shade at the far end of the flower border, plant more ferns, and spend some time searching for shade loving – or at least shade tolerant – plants that bloom.

Or maybe I am not alone in thinking I should seriously consider encouraging more shade, since we know that hotter summers are in our future. I’ve always wanted a magnolia tree, or maybe a mimosa; maybe next spring I’ll plant one or the other.

I’ve made other mistakes too numerous to mention; I hope your list will be shorter.

Finally, we can all ease our loss-of-summer sorrow by remembering that sooner than we think, there will be another summer – and between now and then, there will be a cool and colorful fall, cozy winter holidays, and a glorious and welcome spring.

Jill Severn writes from her home in Olympia, where she grows vegetables, flowers, and a small flock of chickens. She loves conversation among gardeners. Start one by emailing her at  jill@theJOLTnews.com