Autumn has its moments but without a few rainy days and minus the cooler temperatures I’m at a loss.  We could use some rain.  The lingering annuals and a bunch of perennials, and even some shrubs, are wilting now and between you and me I’m almost hoping for a strong frost to come along and put things out of their misery rather than spend the next few weeks hoping for some last-minute miracle to come along and renew the decaying garden.  I was also warm yesterday when I was out doing something in the sun, and flirted with breaking a sweat… which is totally inappropriate for this season of briskness and cozy jackets.

A form of the native aromatic aster, I think this one is ‘Raydon’s Favorite’, should be in every garden.  It outblooms most chrysanthemums and is a late season pollinator magnet.  Here a final bloom of the rose ‘Rosarium Uetersen’ adds a nice dash of coral pink.

Fair warning that this gardener rarely has a kind word to share about the autumn season, so don’t worry that my disgust and lack of interest in the yard means I’m struggling with some kind of seasonal trauma that I’m barely surviving, because that’s not the case.  I’ve been busy and motivated, just not in the garden.  Garage cleanouts, painting, puttering, and life in general are moving along nicely and I don’t really mind that the daily garden tour has turned into a ten minute walk of ‘meh’.

October colors in the front border.  Okay, but kinda boring to be honest.

It’s been somewhat warm and the forecast promises warmer for the next few days, but I did notice a few things have been touched by frost.  Coleus mostly.  Cuttings were saved a few weeks ago and are doing fine, as well as all the other tender goodies which were dragged inside before the cold, and for some reason this year it didn’t seem like nearly as much work as other years.  Many things are in the new basement area and apparently having enough space for your plants goes a long, long way in making the indoor migration less painful.  As a way of celebrating I stopped by a greenhouse clearance sale last week and bought four new plants and that of course is not a problem at all since I stayed under fifteen dollars and I’m sure many people have purchased just one single orchid and then stopped.

I love euphorbia ‘Ascot Rainbow’ and hope it can survive the winter in this pot.  Normally they are borderline hardy here, but maybe if I drag the pot under the protection of the front porch it will stand a chance.

So upon review it sounds like I’m just waiting for winter to come and wipe the outside garden’s slate clean and that might be a fairly accurate assessment.  Year round gardening works for some people but I like a nice winter break, a season and a time to reflect, and maybe a pause in the battle to regroup.  Some things look messy now and I like that I can tidy them up once at this time of year and have it stay that way rather than face a new field of weeds the week after I pull them all.

The potager two days before frost singed the awesomeness of the banana.  Bringing other things in was a breeze, but digging and lugging this beast in?… remains to be seen.

A clean slate in autumn and ‘leave the leaves’ doesn’t necessarily play well together since my impression of the ‘leave the leaves’ movement is that one should leave all the decay of autumn in place until June or whenever of next year just in case a bee or lightning bug chooses to overwinter in that twig or under that leaf.  It’s not a bad reminder that a tornado of leafblowers and a lawn crew which trundles off every last bit of fallen foliage is only leaving a barren wasteland of exposed soil, but it shouldn’t shame you into staring at a drift of leaves against your back door and a depressing flowerbed full of scarecrow twigs all winter.  Do what you want.  It’s your garden and as a gardener you’ve probably already thought about how your garden fits in with the natural world and how happy you’ve been to find it swarming with birds and insects and wildlife in general.  Shame should be reserved for the desolate weed-free lawns of a golf course or the monotonous mono-plantings of some dull homeowner association.  If you needed it I give you permission to trim back the dead things which offend you and remove the leaves which have become too much.  Your garden will still be a refuge.

The last blooms of clematis ‘venosa violacea’ are as pretty as the first and are probably more numerous since I gave the vine a little trim after its first flush of flowers.  A friend said trim it back completely in July, but I wasn’t that brave.

So that’s a lot of tough talk from someone who is likely to never have an immaculate garden to begin with.  Other homeowners are complaining about a few leaves blowing into their yard and sullying their pristine turf while I’m usually wishing for a windy day to dump everything here.  Most will stay where they fall but at some point a mower bag full of their chopped brothers will be spread on top.  It’s a rare day when a twig or stem ends up in the trash and these days there’s not even much going to the compost pile since I tend to tuck pulled weeds and such into the depths of the borders.  It may not be ideal from the perspective of the every leaf is sacred crowd, but even after a run through the mower for the sake of neatness and then a toss back onto the beds these processed leftovers still serve plenty of good.

Frost asters galore in the weedier parts of the garden.  These have a decent winter structure so will stay even after death…

Mid October.  Meh.  If the weather were different and I cared more there would be a cleanup in progress but this year I’m not there yet and the mess is fine.  You look at your own mess though and feel free to clean up whatever you want and know that I’ll have your back, and in the meantime have a great week!