Mother Nature’s Trick on Fall Lovers

Mother Nature must’ve guffawed til her sides ached as she read scores of first day of fall memes flooding the internet. How ironic that fellow lovers of colorful leaves, cozy sweaters, pumpkin patches, and simmering soups wiped dripping sweat from brows in 90 plus temps on the cusp of our favorite season. For folks who’ve eagerly awaited brisk mornings and hoodies, last week’s sultry heat didn’t just set us back; it wilted spirits. Don’t worry, though. We’ll recover as soon as morning thermometers hover in the thirties or low forties.

It’s interesting to read friends’ posts during this hinge between summer and autumn. It doesn’t take long to know who loves frosty winters, pastel springs, simmering beach-weather summers, and my favorite-- fall. When I scan Facebook, I see clearly why some of my friends and I connect. We love this time of year that others see as a harbinger of doom.

We love nature’s colors as foliage morphs from green to yellow, orange, bronze, and crimson. We love gunmetal grays that dominate skies this time of year. We love native grass hues as they switch off chlorophyll production and turn on dormant mode. We love watching birds stage in voracious hordes in preparation to migrate. We love those crazy cricket serenades that foretell dropping temperatures. We love high school football games with its scent of freshly buttered popcorn.

We love knowing hunting seasons have begun so our freezers will soon be full of freshly harvested game. We love standing over the stove to stir soups that smell of onion, garlic, tomatoes, basil, oregano  as they simmer and perfume our homes. We love kneading flour, yeast, eggs, oil, and water into crusty breads we’ll bake, slice, and toast with cheese to eat with our soup or chili. We love others who understand our quirky fixation with this time of year.

I understand why some dread this season. Daylight shortens. Calendars mark the beginning of regimented activities, the end of lazy days at the pool, the last days of garden production, and the beginning of paying a rising winter heat bill. Despite recognizing others’ distress, I can’t help but wake up smiling when the autumnal equinox tells me summer is over. It means my favorite birds, sandhill cranes, will soon return, winging and singing their song across russet and golden fields on their way to New Mexico’s playas. I’ll hear their ancient cry and imagine elk bugling in the background though I know that hasn’t happened across our state for nearly a century.

My fellow autumn lovers are nesters, folks who love snuggling tight at homes with loved ones. This season appeals to those who savor each diminishing sound as cooling nights shut down summer’s harsh decibels. This begins a time of introspection and contemplation. Summer will return for those in mourning. For those of us celebrating its end, ignore the heat and brew a pot of cider. Raise your mug to toast golden days ahead.

Old-Fashioned Gramma’s Garden

Lots of us dream about accomplishing something that makes others shake their heads in wonder. My funky lifetime wish has been to grow an old-fashioned gramma’s flower garden full of purple, blue, and pink larkspur and bachelor buttons; orange, red, and yellow Indian blankets; lavender cosmos; yellow and white daisies; and multi-color hollyhocks. Despite lifetime efforts and lots of money spent on seeds, it’s taken me 40 years and aspringtime of gentle, well-timed, ample rains to make my dream come true.

The irony of this beautiful flowerbed makes me chuckle. I left town and abandoned it to Mother Nature’s care for weeks. During that time, it had no encouragement. No weeding, no fertilizing, no thinning out plants, no early morning sitting on the paving stones dreaming about the pretty bouquets I hoped to harvest and  display in my kitchen window. Apparently, dirt and seeds enjoy benign neglect because I drove up after that absence to spy thriving pinks, purples, blues, lavenders, whites, yellows, oranges, and reds spilling over garden borders and waving wildly  in evening breezes. They were everything I’d hoped for all the years I’d planted store-bought seed and carefully tended previous endeavors.

So, the next irony in this story is that girlfriends gave me hollyhock and larkspur seeds a few years ago. I then harvested bachelor button and Indian blanket seeds that I’d planted two summers ago and sprinkled those among my friends’ gifts. None of this year’s crop came from miserly garden shop packets. Nope, these were homegrown. Two fellow gardeners and I collected dried pods from previous years’ growth, separated the tiny seeds, and then saved them in paper bags to share.

The hollyhocks, bachelor buttons, Indian blanket, and larkspur took a year to gain a solid foothold in my yard. Last summer, I had scraggly, hesitant blooms--nothing like the towers of frothy color dancing boldly under this spring’s sun. In addition to the rain helping, I suspect good old Kansas breezes had something to do with the expansion of my plantings. A few seeds blew south and started new growth. Then stout southerly winds tumbled the majority of them north across our driveway until they landed in a bed of wood chips. Imagine my surprise to see them take root and grow.

By allowing nature to take its course, I ended up with stunning flowers in places I didn’t sow them. Initially, I thought I’d pull the unplanned starts, but I’m glad I didn’t. Not only do I have a new bed of larkspur and bachelor buttons outdoing itself on the other side of the drive, I have hollyhocks in places I never expected to find them. They proudly belong.

Perhaps letting Mother Nature do her thing in the sowing and watering is the secret to a successful old-fashioned, Gramma’s garden. That saucy anthropomorph has done a stellar job  taking seeds friends gave me, multiplying and then tossing them in the wind, and raining on them to show me how to get the job done. I’m going to help her out by harvesting, drying, and passing on these tiny power packs of beauty to my daughters and my friends.