Plant Talk

November Bouquet - Blurring the Lines Between Garden Fresh and Store Bought

Autumn is well and truly upon us; this 'Forest Pansy' redbud in Langley Village is barely holding on to the last of its leaves beneath moody twilight skies.

Between mid-November, when the garden is well and truly soaked, and February when early bulbs and hellebores bloom, we no longer have the luxury of stepping out into the garden to cut a bouquet. It's time to augment with store-bought.

Sure, the sasanqua camellias are starting to bloom, and there's evergreen foliage out there...but if you want to make a decent sized bouquet, with contrast and color,  the trick is to figure out how to combine store bought and home grown. Subtlety is key - an emphasis on texture, or tone-on-tone colors.

I bought flowers for the first time since April for this bouquet I made for Museo's Gallery's November opening party. I combined glossy orange berries (no idea what they might be) with red/orange dahlias from the grocery store (the most gardenesque-looking flowers I could find). I'm not yet ready for winter staples like lilies or tulips (really, I saw the first bunch of tulips at Metropolitan Market last week. They look so wrong in autumn...)

I had to stick the materials from the garden right into the sink to wash the spiders and their sticky webs off...callicarpa and hypericum berries, and the last hydrangeas from the garden.

I got off to a discouraging start trying to figure out how to combine so many rigidly upright, stick-like elements in one bouquet.....far too awkward and stiff...

The yellow pitcher, which I loved with summer flowers, looks too bright and obvious now. The subdued autumn colors of berry and leaf, stem and twig, look more at home in this copper colored raku cylinder (below).  The dahlias were bugging me...I needed one more element...an ornamental cabbage cut from a pot on the front porch (bottom right) did the trick...

But the various elements didn't really come together in a satisfying way, and the dahlias started withering withered around the edges - it's always hard to tell how fresh store bought flowers are. Not so fresh, in this case.

So I brewed a fresh cup of tea, put on some music, and plopped everything out of the vase. Time to re-envision and start over. I re-cut stems, discarded the dahlias, and took a long look at what I had to work with. I also cut more of the little ornamental cabbages, sheared all the lower leaves off so the stems were nice and long.

I ended up with an arrangement that features the berries that were obscured by the fluff of flowers in the earlier version...looks like a bird buffet bouquet to me...

I'm much happier with its more quiet, autumnal nature... Isn't it amazing how much better the cabbages look cut for the vase than growing in a pot?

 

 

 

Autumn's Burnished Bounty....Leaves from Oaks, Witch Hazels, Hardy Geraniums, Maples....

“How beautiful the leaves grow old.
How full of light and color are their last days.”
– John Burroughs

Just before the rain and wind set in, I spent a happy hour collecting leaves around Langley and then pressed them between paper towels set under stacks of books. Viewed close up and in contrast with one another, the leaves are startlingly different from each other. These last remnants of summer are nearly as vivid and varied as flowers, with their own rich, wabi sabi color palette...and so fun to gather because the trees drop them freely into your hands, beneath your feet, onto your head....autumn's burnished bounty.

The pale leaf above is Romneya coulteri...the darkest leaf is a smoke bush...

After posing for the cameras, the leaf melange made its way to the dining room table, along with some mop head hydrangeas drying in the vase. One look at the leaf-strewn table and I felt like making a pot of soup and baking pumpkin bread....

Autumn Flowers and Grasses at Swanson's Nursery - Time for a Field Trip

Bridget and I spent a happy hour cruising the aisles of Swansons Nursery last week. Dogs are welcome, there's a cafe, tempting giftshop, koi swimming lazily in ponds, bins full of fall bulbs, and plenty of inspiration for autumn planting.

How many generations of gardeners have enjoyed strolling around Swansons Nursery on a sunny autumn afternoon, picturing this chrysanthemum or that aster blooming in their own gardens? Nursery tables are filled with plenty of coneflowers, sedum, helianthus, helenium, phlox and swathes of shimmery ornamental grasses to keep your garden going during this hiatus between the peak of summer bloom and fall color kicking in.

I've heard from several growers and nursery people that the newest generation of colorful coneflowers are more truly perennial than the first wave which rarely returned in springtime. I hope this is true, because I found several of the orange and red ones impossible to resist - they look so good with the purple and bronze grasses, or in this medley of coneflowers, asters, and Japanese anemones...

These lavender/purple phlox smell heavenly, and as you can see....they're on sale...

This dwarf echinacea would be perfect at the front of the border, especially because so many of the autumn perennials have grown tall and floppy by this point in the season...and this color would really warm the garden on misty mornings...

These asters are the Michaelmas daisies that British authors like Barbara Pym and Anita Brookner are always writing about in their novels to evoke autumn in the country.

This is the first variegated ornamental pepper I've seen - these are annuals, fun for the porch or houseplants...

And the clear, vivid yellow of perennial sunflowers (Helianthus 'Lemon Queen') against the blue, blue autumn sky...of course, I brought a pot (or two) of these home with me...

Soon enough there'll be holiday decorations and hellebores, gifts and trimmings...oh, please let the blue sky and autumn flowers last at least a few more weeks....

 

 

 

Sunshine, Moonlight, Star Shine and Poetry - Happy Autumn Equinox 2012

The Guemes island artist Leo Osborne sent me this poem today, sent to him by a friend in Charleston. Watch for a story about Leo's art and garden in my Natural Gardener column in Pacific Northwest magazine in early December....in the meantime...

Fall Equinox

The Magic Calls

By Lee Kieseling

 Nature’s clock sounds the deep, resounding bell:

Night and Day are equal today

Gather the fruits of your labor

Prepare for the coming chill

Take stock of what is revered

Cull what is not

Collect the seed for the planting

Fill the stores

Bank the fire

Secure the threshing house

Give thanks

Give thanks!

 The bell tolls, its draw from a time of history and internal calling

And the magic still has life under the dust of memory

And I smell the bread I’ve put in my oven warning me not to be over-long in my reverie

One more look at the moon and stars

One last breath, I fill my nose with the coming season

I step back into the present, the everyday and close the door on the night.

Equinoxes are astrologically potent events that happen just twice a year. Autumn officially begins today, when day and night are of equal length due to the tilt of the Earth's axis. For this brief time, the center of the sun is in the same plane as the Earth's equator. Even Wikipedia waxes eloquent; "The equinox is a precise moment in time which is common to all observers on Earth."

We Earthlings experience this as an uptick in the tempo of seasonal change. It marks the beginning of our slide toward darkness, which feels postponed, pleasantly delayed by this sunny stretch of weather with clear nights to enjoy moonlight and star shine.

The garden clearly shows the effects of drought, shorter days, chillier nights. Here are a few scenes from my garden this morning; the maples are turning, the geraniums, hydrangeas and helenium bloom on, and the last of summer warmth is ripening the pumpkins....

That's a rodgersia crumpling away on the bottom left...and a solid chartreuse Japanese forest grass (Hakonechloa macra) in a small pot in the foreground. It'll keep going until first frost.

A few sweet peas hanging on...

 

Wabi Sabi Time of Year

I'm no longer trying to get the best out of my garden, whatever that might be. It's given its all, through the chill, soggy spring that dragged on into July. And it kept going through the next-to-longest dry spell ever, and this lingering spell of September sunshine.

The hydrangeas bloomed bounteously, the strawberries and peapods produced over many weeks, the wisteria rebloomed, and the begonias and sweet peas carried on valiantly. The gunnera (left) is slowly, sensually collapsing.

I admire my neighbors ripening pears, freshly mown lawn, and tidy rows of corn and chard. But right now, I'm simply watching my garden mellow into the cooler nights, the shorter days, the effects of all these days without rain.

There will be plenty of time to cut things back and clean up once the sun no longer warms the chaise enough to read outdoors, the sweet, ripe raspberries are gone, and the frogs have left off singing away the afternoons.

The concept of wabi sabi comes from Zen Buddhism, so in its very essence is undefinable. But as autumn approaches, if we can just slow down and appreciate the garden as it is,  we can feel the spirit of wabi sabi all around us. It's a love of imperfection, an acknowledgement that decline and senescence are as beautiful in their way as the flush of springtime. It's about humbleness and the rhythms of nature. It's as much about feeling and mood as about aesthetics....

A wabi sabi flower arrangment in a rough raku vase made by Whidbey artist Al Tennant.  Past-their-prime artichokes, a rodgersia flower that dried on the plant, sea oat grass (Chasmanthium latifolium), and a burgundy, fluffy plume or two of pennisetum bring the ambience of autumn indoors.

 

Flame Bouquet - A Mix of Home-Grown and Store-Bought

Just a small bunch of deep amber, red throated calla lilies make all the difference. As painful as it is after a long season of gathering from the garden, it's time to break down and buy some flowers to perk up what's left out there in the garden. After the frost, rain and wind the pickings are skimpy. Here's a bouquet I made for a recent opening at Museo Gallery in Langley.

I bought five calla lilies at Metropolitan Market on the top of Queen Anne hill, which always has something tempting. Tulips were cheaper, but I just can't buy tulips yet....I'll save them to perk up bleak January. Don't you love how the calla's curl like seashells? At least their deep, autumnal colors look as if they might have been growing in the garden this late in the season....

I wanted the bouquet to look pure November, so added some leafless rose hips, coral bark maple leaves turned golden, purple hydrangea leaves, and the drama of fluffy chocolate mimosa foliage. A few Chinese lanterns dangle over the edge of the cylindrical raku vase for their hot orange autumn color as well as their appealing puffy shape.

Aren't those skinny dark mimosa twigs gorgeous against the round, red rose hips?  I picked it literally two days before the whole mimosa tree dropped every last leaf...

Autumn Splendor at Washington Park Arboretum's Japanese Garden

From fat, jewel-colored koi roiling lazily around in still ponds, to watchful herons and maples expertly pruned for decades, the Japanese garden at the Arboretum is at its most beautiful this week. I think its even lovelier now than when it blooms pink with cherry blossoms in springtime, mostly because the colors are more varied and spectacular now, from pure gold through coral, orange and deep, dark bordeaux. And the impact of every vivid leaf is magnified by its watery reflection.

Best wander the paths of the Japanese garden in the next few days, for it closes for the winter on November 13. Until then, it's open Tues-Sun,10:00 a.m. – 4:00 p.m. The garden has an entrance fee, and it's located at 1075 Lake Washington Blvd E, the main drag through the Arboretum. Call (206) 684-4725 for information.

I celebrated the Day of the Dead, or All Soul's Eve, by visiting the Japanese garden with a dear friend...here's how drop-dead gorgeous it was looking last week: (This is iphoneography, by the way, with the new iPhone 4 that replaced my original generation phone...)

 

Hampstead Heath Ablaze - London's Fall Color Peaks With Ours

Here's a dawn photo out a friend's sister's flat window, looking toward Hampstead Heath in London. More an impressionistic painting than digital photo, it could be Winslow Homer at his atmospheric best.

I love the thought that halfway around the globe, Londoners are looking out their windows and drinking in the joy of a morning lit with autumn leaves, just as we're relishing the same prolonged and profoundly colored-up autumn here in the Northwest...

Now's the Moment - Autumn Color Before November's Serious Rains

It feels like nature is holding her breath - I love this moment just before the last of the leaves fall. Foliage that unfurled last April and clothed the garden for the past seven months has only a few days left, at best.

The colors are as intense as they'll ever get, the glory so very brief. Spring is a more measured season, a crescendo of bloom with one plant flowering after another over months. Fall is a percussive blast like a pair of clanging cymbals; soon there'll be only the reverberation left in our mind's eye.

Early November brings days wet, rainy, and windy enough to strip the trees naked, revealing views we haven't seen in months...The vivid, fluttering foliage will be piles of soggy dead leaves, clogging drains and mushing down to winter. By next week it'll be the starkness of bare branches, the garden stripped down to its bones again.

In the next couple of weeks, we'll have our first hard freeze, and for gardeners, the year will come to a close.

A torch-like little maple at the Woodmen Cemetery in Langley

 

The little bench beneath the big tree at the top of the hill on Second Street is one of my favorite scenes in Langley, especially when the maple is in color...

A multi-trunked vine maple doing its fall thing...

Sourwood (Oxydendron arboreum) turns to pure fire in late October..the creamy flowers hold on long enough to contrast with the blazing foliage

 

 

Fall Color Just off the Freeway? Lake Sacajawea Park in Longview is Ablaze...

You don't have to drive up into the mountains to relish the color of changing leaves - just veer off I-5 on your way to or from Portland and enjoy a walk around Lake Sacajawea in the heart of....Longview? This logging town at the confluence of the Cowlitz and Columbia rivers might not strike you as a tourist destination, but it was one of the first planned communities in the country, and it's 120 acre park is a beauty.

Lake Sacajawea Park is a little like Seattle's Greenlake, with a trail leading around a lake, and plenty of majestic trees. Right now, brilliant leaves are blowing everywhere, herons and cormorants, ducks and geese are flying overhead and hanging out on the islands in the lake. The park is beautifully cared for, and the well-groomed trail leads over bridges, past fountains, and a fenced Japanese garden on a little promontory. Unlike Greenlake, the trail isn't at lake-level, but offers an elevated view of the lake sunken below it. Lawns slope down to the water, and the trail is a perfect perch to admire watery reflections of huge maples blazing orange and red - fall color doubled in intensity.

On a recent wet and blustery day I walked around the lake...here are a few scenes that might tempt you south for a visit....the leaves were so multi-colored and freshly blown that the scene beneath our feet was nearly as brilliant as the one overhead and all around us...

Moody skies and trees reflected in the lake looks like a quintessentially English Capability Brown landscape

The Buddha at the entry gate to the little Japanese garden

A maple tree doing its thing

The view from the trail...

This cormorant seems to enjoy its view of the fountain...it sat here preening and spreading its wings for much of our walk