Fall, Glorious Fall
Okay, so I’ve been a little remiss in writing my blogs and I have heard about it from my friends and followers. To all of you, I humbly apologize. I can’t possibly keep up with life in the fast lane AND blog at the same time. Seriously, folks!
Anyway, I guess I haven’t blogged because you have to be in a certain frame of mind to blog. An avid gardener and plant lover, I found it hard to write about gardening - when everyday it was an EFFORT to step outside and look at the wilting landscape and dodge the mosquitoes. Did we say, mosquitoes? Well we don’t just have mosquitoes, we have MOSQUITOES. Asians, Tigers, whateva! We have them.
It was dry and we still had them. No water for the poor plants, but we still had them. Now, we’ve finally had a substantial amount of rain - the lawn came back, the summer annuals are still flourishing and we have more mosquitoes than we could ever have imagined. They bite during the day, at dusk, in the evening. They piggyback on your clothes when you come in the door and hide until the next day so they can come out and bite you again. Ugh!
BUT, fall has finally arrived. No bite in the air yet (and I’m not talking about the m-word here) but fall has finally arrived with the long shadows and shortened days and the coolness that signifies this great season. So, I took the opportunity to do the “stroll” and found we lost four arborvitae due to drought and my failure to care for them as I should. Four years in the ground and we lost four of about 15. So, more costly to replace than the effort that I should have exerted to water them and drag the hose all the way over to the end of the property. Now besides the expense, I’ll have to find ones that match height and variety, etc.
But, other than that, due to my efforts, nothing else was lost. AND the welcome rain we did receive early this month gave things an added reprieve, a collective sigh of relief.
So, October is a wonderful month. The smell of fall in the air - chimneas and woodburning stoves the visual glory of pumpkins, mums and fall asters - but also the last hurrah of the summer flowers. Mine have never looked better. If you still have annuals left after this dry, hot summer, treat them with kindness - a little more water - and enjoy them until the frost.
Impatiens, zinnias, moonflowers - everything is still glorious. Savor them because they’ll be gone with the first frost - but treat them right and they’ll grace you with their presence until the last hurrah!
