Just a little bit longer

We seem to have gone straight from summer into Indian summer, with barely a glancing blow from the season's first two frosts. Their temperatures dipped into the "killing frost" zone of the twenties, but must not have lingered long enough to do the usual slash-'n-burn damage. Sure, the tropicals and tender annuals are gone, and there was no reason to keep the warm-weather veggies on life support, but look at the things still blooming that really aren't supposed to be around anymore: Cosmos bipinnatus (the Cosmos sulphureus, as expected, is gone); a few ageratum; moss roses; and even a smallish castor bean plant tucked in a sheltered ell between concrete patio and foundation. I spent as much time as possible out in the garden in this weekend's t-shirt weather, doing the first stage of garden cleanup and trying to enjoy every second of every bloom of this late season reprieve. But it's time to start collecting thoughts for an end-of-season post-mortem, and to start imagining what to do differently for next year's garden. So: I will plant more sunset hibiscus (on this day it is my favorite flower—overlapping tissue-like petals in a newborn chick yellow, with an eye the color of clotted blood—and, yes, it was blooming today). I will plant at least five times as much calendula as I did this year, and use it wherever I'm tempted to plug in (blecch) chrysanthemums. I will sow blue flax in the front bed around the cranberry bush viburnum and the Rosa carolina, given the performance of the scarlet flax this season, which has bloomed every blessed day since June 15 and is still going strong. And I will let the scarlet runner beans make many more of their long fat pods and many more handfuls of their purple-pink beans, which look good enough to be gathered into a little cloth sack and traded for a little boy's cow.

Comments

[Kathy]

In my experience blue flax starts in spring, about when the main tulip season starts, and peters out when the heat of summer hits. I can't ever remember it reblooming in fall, as say, Johnny-jump-ups do. It is gorgeous, though--just not ever-blooming.

[Chan S.]

That's good to know--not surprising that the blooming habit would be different with the perennial flax than the annual scarlet flax. I almost wonder whether the scarlet flax was unusually long-blooming this year (just like the sweet peas, which never stopped) because of the unusually cool summer...I kept expecting it to poop out mid-summer and it just kept going on and on and on, much to my delight.

[Lynn S]

Ah, plans.... I actually follow through on about one 10th to one 4th of my plans. I did plant some reblooming irises today in my problem bed.

[Chan S.]

1/10 to 1/4 followthrough? Your batting average beats mine! Cheers.