Taking Stock at the End of the Season

The light is changing as we slide into autumn. It pools, viscous and gold, on the leaves of the catalpa trees that have finally grown tall above our gate. It drips over the big-leafed maples, which are already losing their leaves to drought. The dark creeps in earlier each evening, the moon lighting up the sky on the cool, clear nights of autumn.

Spring started with the croaking of frogs, hundreds of them it seemed, calling in the marsh at the bottom of our property. For two months they called, enjoying the higher water levels thanks to a rogue beaver that’s blocked off the drainage ditch at the marsh’s outlet. Now they’re long gone and we’re serenaded by crickets and grasshoppers, the August/September chorus. Sometimes in the night I hear the splashing and smacking of water by a beaver’s tail, and think I should go down there, barefoot in the dark, to catch sight of it in person.

A few days ago a strange ferret-like creature slunk under the ornamental cherry tree, alongside the side of the house, under the deck and out the other side. It was all black, though, unlike a ferret. I thought perhaps it was a marten or a fisher but the pictures didn’t look like what I’d seen. Do any of you have ideas of what it could have been?

I’d been checking the walnuts in the tree out back, wondering when I could start picking a few to try. That afternoon I was sitting on the back deck and saw the branches sway as a squirrel snipped two walnuts off the branch and ran up the fir tree with their bounty in their mouth. Now the walnut tree is empty. Stripped of all its sustenance. The squirrels are going to have a great winter.

This year it seemed as though we were behind with everything. There was an unexpected heat wave in May, and we started watering too late in the veggie garden. The blueberries had shrivelled berries and their leaves turned orange. The ones that did produce provided us with a handful of berries, but when I went to pick the rest the birds had got them all.

I picked half the grapes and then was going to pick the other half once they’d ripened a bit more. They were all gone—birds or squirrels is my guess. One bag of grapes for the freezer this year.

We didn’t water the raspberries in time, plus they were overrun by weeds. I managed to get rid of most of the weeds and water the plants regularly, but it was a case of too little too late. No raspberries for the freezer this year.

And the blackberries – I waited too long to go and pick them in the back-40. I got busy with other things and just didn’t check them. Now they’re sour and tasteless. No blackberries for the freezer this year.

The apples have been prolific, however. The honeycrisp apples are ready to pick, but the others aren’t quite ripe yet. We have to pick them soon, so the bears don’t get at them. I imagine we’ll give away most of them, after we’ve made a load of crisps and bags of chopped apples for the freezer.

We didn’t get on top of the weeding early enough this year, largely because I was feeling terrible, so the weeds took over the gardens we had so carefully weeded last year. Some plants aren’t doing well, and while drought is a large part of the equation, it’s also the soil. It’s depleted and dusty, not full of organics and humus that can hold water and sustain life.

We’ve been here 10 years, so it’s time for a garden overhaul. This October will be a time of renewal in the perennial garden, moving plants around to fill in our front yard gardens and getting rid of those that can’t survive drought. Weeding as much as possible. Top dressing everything with a richer soil. We’ll remove some of the raised garden beds that are falling apart (another sign of that 10-year decline), and put in another bed for raspberries. That’s the focus of the veg garden going forward—a berry and fruit garden, with grapes, raspberries, rhubarb, apples, and blueberries. Making the gardens more manageable, like consolidating plants in the front yard gardens and letting the lower perennial bed grass over.

We have fifteen Douglas fir seedlings and ten cedar seedlings that we got for free from a local grower. All are doing well in their pots, enjoying the rich soil I put them in. The firs will go along the front fence, where they’ll make a dense privacy shield. Not sure yet where we’ll put the cedars.

October will be gardening season until the rains come. Though they might come early and we’ll be gardening in the rain. Well, it’s easier to transplant things when it’s damp—the soil is easier to dig and the plants don’t get as stressed by the move.

Here’s to autumn, the equinox (coming up on Sunday!), and the slide into the quieter months of the year.