The Rise of Fall

Photography by Ellie Meade

What a glorious season. The aster border is finally in bloom. Cool, even cold, nights, rain, shorter days and longer nights confirm it; summer is finally over and we are into another year filled with color in the woods garden. During this recent dry, early October cyclamen managed only a few flowers accompanied by crocuses with only a few wispy flowers, but by the end of the month the woods were filled with Cyclamen hederifolium interspersed with crocuses flowering in shades of blue, purple, as well as pure white. Each day brought forth more flowers in places where we expected to see them as well as throughout the adjacent areas where ants had carried their seeds.

Snowdrops appeared in their expected and a few unexpected places. We can see Galanthus reginae-olgae, G. peshmenii, and even the emerging buds of G. elwesii var. monostictus without our bending to the ground. We also came back to life with optimism and plans for more plantings. We dug hundreds of Lycoris radiata and planted them on a slope below the cyclamen walk, knowing that their vivid red flowers would have faded before the cyclamens’ pink ones opened. We set each bulb into its own hole and by the end of the day the area looked like a small field of onions, collapsed and limp; however, within the week the leaves were upright and this area looked as if it had been there for a while. We watched the long-range temperature forecasts, knowing a killing frost was in our future but not knowing exactly when it would come. Our primary goal during the past two weeks has been to save our favorite tender plants for next year. We brought in plants, some within their planters, repotted those which needed it and filled the greenhouses and basement. We collected seeds of our favorite annuals. We are ready!