Our first frost happened a couple of nights ago, drawing a map of hardiness, protection, and resilience across the garden. The hardy perennials, like these asters, didn’t notice, originating as they do in climates that reward ability to cope with winter. Tender annuals, like my basil and tomatoes, withered and keeled over. I had already brought into the house several pots of basil and all the green tomatoes still on the vine, in anticipation of this. These are plants whose ancestors never met with winter weather, and had no need to adapt to it.
Then there are hardy annuals, like petunias. They can resist the kind of winters we had in Southern California, which did sometimes include a light frost in late December. They seem to be familiar with this and will persevere through it, but when the hard, serious frost comes, they succumb. Marigolds and pansies are also in this category. Okay, so far all is neat and clear in the life cycles of my garden plants.
But then we have this scenario from the way back of the garden. Marigolds, check, still abloom as expected. But there’s that cosmos standing tall and happy, while all the other cosmos in the garden is dead. Sort of looks like the marigolds talked them into it. Good story, but the reality is different. There’s a tall black cherry tree just outside the picture, leaning over the garden fence enough to shelter the cosmos from the sky. The same thing that makes this part of the garden too shady for plants like tomatoes, expected to ripen fruit, offers protection from light frost.
So the resilience a plant shows in the face of frost can be inborn, or it can be situational. It’s the job of the gardener to situate the plant where it can have its best outcome. Here’s some milkweed in process of its best outcome, which is not the propagation of Monarch butterflies, but the launching of its frothy seeds into chilly autumn air that carries them into the future.
I have a good lawn for deer and rabbits, full – if only accidentally – of diverse edible weeds. Looking out over it, especially when Charlie has just mowed, the lawn looks smooth and manicured. Appearances frequently deceive. For instance, this photo might look like a nuclear deer family, two fawns, a buck, and a doe. But four other the deer had already gone ahead into the woods before I got my camera out. The buck would have been bringing up the rear as usual, except that the fawns were lollygagging behind. But as soon as I made a tiny sound of satisfaction at getting this photo, their heads snapped up and the fawns leaped after the does, while Mr. Buck stood guard in case I made any moves. I didn’t. I was trying to see whether he was an eight point or a ten point, but he was gone before I could be sure.
My lawn has a lot of white clover in it, which some consider a weed but I do not. In my suburban childhood it was common for lawns to be seeded with half grass and half clover. Clover is sturdy, holding up well to children and pets; clover fixes nitrogen so you don’t need fertilizer; and clover flowers attract bees, which will pollinate your garden plants and fruit trees. Charlie was late mowing this week, because we had two days of Hurricane Beryl’s leftovers drenching Michigan with rain. Amazing that a hurricane came all the way from Africa to crash into Texas and charge up the Mississippi and Ohio River valleys to the normally hurricane-free Michigan. Many were the frantic sump pumps in Ann Arbor, but the sandy soil of my yard was up to the task. When it was over, everything was safe and green, green, green.
Besides the clover, there’s plantain in the lawn and purslane at the margins. Plantain, native to Europe, was called “white man’s footprint” by Native Americans: where the white man set his foot was where you found plantain. It’s not only edible to deer, it’s edible to us. Purslane is, too. My attempts to actually eat these plants have never worked out. Purslane leaves are small and have to be gathered in large quantities, and I found plantain, which grows flat against the ground, hard to clean. I magnanimously leave them for the deer, in spite of which they persist in eating things they really, really shouldn’t. For instance, milkweed. Milkweed is poisonous, but if you are a clueless fawn, well, just look at those big, juicy leaves. I assume it’s the fawns because I assume they don’t grow up if they eat the milkweed.
Deer sometimes also eat my rudbeckia, yarrow, and shasta daisies. Garden catalogs will tell you they shun these plants, but garden catalogs have never met my deer. Every evening or two, I walk through the yard with my trusty spray bottles of animal repellants, switching off now and then so the critters don’t get used to one of them. I almost dread to say so, for fear it will jinx their effectiveness.
The amount of rain in that storm varied a lot from one part of town to the next. I don’t currently have a working rain gauge, but friends and neighbors have measured anywhere from five to seven inches over two days. One curious thing I’ve noticed is more birds using the birdbath after a rainstorm. This seems totally counter-intuitive to me. Didn’t they shower in the rain? Is it easier to bathe when they’re already wet? Or maybe newly-fallen rain is more attractive to them than water that’s been sitting around for a few days. Not being a bird, I will never know.
Robin Richstone 