As usual there was every intention to get a post up and not have weeks in between, but as usual that didn’t happen.  There has been an autumn slump.  For a few years now this gardener has breezed through late summer enjoying lycoris and colchicum and then asters and mums, but this year the more traditional doom and gloom returned.  Apathy and disgust lasted for about two weeks -which is not bad at all I think- as the plants die and freeze back and the garden empties of color, and now I’m back to seeing the good in a season change since to be honest I was getting kind of tired of the New Guinea impatients.

With a long fall in play, the historic iris ‘Eleanor roosevelt’ (1933) is sending up blooms and I’m enjoying deep purple in a garden of russets and yellow.

The apathy made it easier to whack back brugmansias in bloom and shovel out fruiting bananas but it didn’t make me want to build an indoor greenhouse high enough to nurture my banana crop to maturity.  I compromised with a back-breaking dig of fruiting stem and offsets (usually I chop them apart for a lighter load) tossed them in a plastic bag and now they sit in the garage (mildly heated) and we will see if they can survive the next few months.  The plan is to toss a little water on them here and there and to “forget” to turn off the garage lights now and then and hope for the best.  The best, in case you’re wondering, is that the banana pauses for a few months and then has enough strength to finish growing next summer so we will see.

‘Icecream’ bananas enjoying their last day of sun.  Usually all the leaves are trimmed and the larger stalks seperated so the plants require less lifting.

Winter is coming as you know and getting everything protected is probably a bigger job than any normal person would be willing to take, but apparently I am less normal than most other people.  A few things every day, and by the night-before-freezing all that was left were the geraniums.  I considered carefully potting them up and bringing them in but that was about the time my slump hit.  They were pulled out of planters and stuffed in a garbage bag and drug inside, and I headed inside and turned the tv on.

Even in a slump I still enjoy my geraniums, so these were trimmed and crammed into small pots and are now also in the garage.  Eventually I’ll find a light to put them under but for now they’re just holding on.

Maybe I watched the first five seasons of Game of Thrones while the slump ran its course but eventually the autumn bulbs came back to rescue me.  Allium thunbergii is the latest allium I grow and is always abuzz with honeybees looking for one more snack.

Allium thunbergii ‘Ozawa’.  I’ve seen it in better gardens with lush green foliage but here the summers fry it up a bit.

The rest of the autumn show is very promising.  Hardy Cyclamen hederifolium has been sending up blooms for the last month, but now foliage is starting to sprout and has created a patterned carpet under the last flowers.  I don’t think it would be the worst idea to start another bed or two of these.

The cooler weather is bringing the Cyclamen hederifolium bed to life.  It’s a carpet of marbled and patterned foliage and as long as the snow holds off the show will stay on.

Of course there would be plenty of snowdrops throughout a new cyclamen bed.  Galanthus reginae-olgae is my first reliable snowdrop which flowers in the fall, and they’ve hit their peak.  I was nervous about anything this delicate-looking being able to come into growth now and then endure months of snow and ice but they are proving to be quite hardy.  Summer wet during dormancy is probably the only problem I’ve run in to and I may start experimenting with finding a few more summer-dry spots in a few more exposed locations.  Right now they seem to do best for me in a dry woodland sort of setting, so full exposure might be a real test.

A named form of Galanthus reginae-olgae, ‘Tilebarn Jamie’ has been healthy and vigorous here at the base of a clump of birch.

Of course my wishes for more are being derailed by an anemic budget, but a friend gifted me a new treasure in the G. reginae-olgae family, a bulb of the recently named ‘Elizabeth Lawrence’.  With green tips and a vigorous reputation I hope I’ve found a spot it likes because so far I’m smitten.  It’s a cool bulb, selected and named here in the US after the garden writer who made Charlotte NC her home and became one of the most knowledgeable writers and designers of Southeastern US gardens.

Galanthus ‘Elizabeth Lawrence’ amongst the fallen maple leaves.

The second autumn blooming snowdrop to arrive here in my NE Pa garden is Galanthus bursanus.  This is another one which I’m surprised to have since it’s only recently been described as a species.  Within a few years seeds have been collected, grown, hybridized, and now it graces many a garden even as its native habitat in Turkey faces the usual threats of development and destruction.  Hopefully in the not so distant future gardens will not be the only place this plant it found.

Just a few years of growing and dividing and my single G. bursanus bulb has become a clump.  Again I’m surprised this semingly delicate thing can survive the full brunt of winter in my garden.

So there it is.  The start of snowdrop season and my confession that I’ve finally accepted that summer is just a memory.  Clean starts are always nice so I guess rather than complain I’ll just say thank you to the killing frost, thank you for reading, and all the best for the upcoming week.