The towering canopy of the honey locust tree that shelters our front garden, above; and, below, this morning’s view from the spare bedroom on the third floor.
Lastly, the view from the window of my office, a converted sunroom at the back of our house. Often cardinals come to visit, and sometimes a hawk.
In the night it snowed. The birds huddle together and then cluster at the feeder. Soon the squirrels will emerge from the roof over my head and descend to pick up the seeds they kick down to the ground. How stoically — how gently — the cedars bear the birds, the squirrels, the the feeder, and their burden of winter.
This morning when I woke up, the house was cold. I went around, closing windows and doors. The sunrise was fuchsia, signalling a change in the weather, a shift in the season.
At mid-morning the air is cool and breezy. There are cardinals in the cedars, and finches at the feeders. The east-facing tips of the trees are turning colour, and the gutters are littered with leaves.
For breakfast I had wild apple sumac jelly on toast. A warm treat on a chilly morning. A good day for seasonal tasks of keeping: sorting the mittens and scarves, decorating the front porch for Thanksgiving, making a rustic apple pie. Rosh Hashanah begins tonight at sundown: Shanah tovah um’tukah to all who will celebrate.
The picture above is from an old book, Gardens in their Seasons, published in 1912 (my copy a 1919 reprint). This is a charming, gently instructional book, written for young readers and wonderfully illustrated. I bought my copy at The Monkey’s Paw moving sale in the spring, and have kept it on my desk ever since, consulting it nearly as regularly as one would a book of days.
Of fall, the book notes, “Autumn has come; it is the time of ripening. [….] The hush and the stillness of late summer has been broken.” During this season, the book explains, the trees and flowering plants expend the last of their energy generating seeds to be spread by passing creatures or the wind. Readers are invited to “gather the prettiest and the best of the coloured leaves of the autumn,” to press into biscuit tins between layers of sand to dry and preserve their rich colours.
There is melancholy in the air, when soft days give way to chilly nights and the moon rises silently above the trees, overseeing this time of gathering in, this season of contemplation.
Every morning, shortly after dawn, I go up to the third floor deck to tend to the garden, sniff the scents of the new morning, and take a census of my horizon of trees.
Every morning has a different scent. This morning the air had a northern, almost September smell, until the sun breached the horizon. Yesterday the air was redolent with woodsmoke, drifting upon a wind that soughed in the cedars. The day before that the air smelled of the lake. In the hour after dawn the city, or my part of it, is silent. No traffic sounds, no sirens, not even an airplane. This morning the air is perfectly still, and only the birds and I are present to sing the morning open. The air is scented with ailanthus blossoms, opening about a week later than usual but as secretive and summery as ever.
Unknown heirloom tomato cultivar with complex blossoms.
This year I am growing at least five varieties of tomatoes, including “Summerlast’ (early-fruiting patio-sized supposedly long-fruiting determinate tomato plants, of which I have six plants going), ‘Rapunzel’ (a newish hybrid tomato that reportedly grows long, gorgeous tresses of cherry tomatoes; this is by far my tallest tomato plant so far, heading for five feet already as it begins to flower), San Marzano (two very sturdy plants, both flowering now), an unknown (because I failed to save the labeled starter pot) tomato plant I bought at the Junction Farmers’ Market, and several ‘heirloom’ tomatoes.
‘Heirloom’ is a bit of a misnomer, as there are many heirloom varieties of tomatoes. Heirloom or heritage tomatoes are typically open-pollinated, older, non-commercial cultivars. Reportedly they tend to lack the disease resistance and uniformity of commercial cultivars, but in compensation they are inherently more biodiverse and interesting to grow, and produce tomatoes of sometimes wildly varying sizes, colours and shapes. My ‘heirloom’ tomatoes came labeled as such at the Canadian Tire garden centre, with the note that each plant might grow quite differently depending on its variety.
This has definitely been my experience this year. Each of my heirloom tomato plants looks quite different. All are vertically inclined, although not rampantly so, and their leaves and blossoms are somewhat idiosyncratic. My favourite, so far, is the heirloom tomato pictured above, whose leaves emerge curled and inverted, almost as if blighted, but then unfurl, completely hale. The blossoms are also unusual, large and multi-layered. I have read that large blossoms produce large tomatoes, and am looking forward with considerable curiosity to see what this heirloom plant produces.
On the third floor deck I am also growing two containers of corn (this year’s wildcard), zucchinis (only two of which survived the early ravages of squirrels digging up the seeds; zucchini are supposedly easy to grow, but each year mine succumb to some new peril and/or fail to produce fruit), three large tubs of very large red potato plants, two eggplants, two sweet peppers, red onions, everbearing strawberries, garlic, and several varieties of herbs (lemon verbena, pineapple sage, lavender, basil, catnip).
Third floor back deck garden, late June 2019.
Most of my 22 varieties of herbs (this year’s herbs include lavender, basil, catnip, lemon verbena, lemon thyme, sage, oregano, rosemary, dill, tarragon, rue, summer savory, winter savory, marjoram, fennel, cilantro, parsley, pineapple sage, chamomile, sorrel, curry plant, borage) are growing on the second floor front balcony (shown below), alongside a few more tomatoes, bush beans, carrots, beets, more garlic and more red onions. Our radish have been pulled, and I haven’t yet decided whether to simply seed more dill or risk salad greens in the summer heat in their currently vacant container.
floor front balcony garden, 1 July 2019.
Sometimes I sorrow over not being able to grow more vegetables at ground level on our shady city property (currently our ground-level growing is limited to rhubarb, raspberries and red currants), but between patios, verandahs, balconies and decks we are able to dedicate about as much square footage to vegetables and herbs as we might manage in the soil, without the same risks of soil depletion and problems with pests.
Third floor back deck, plants aglow in the early morning light.
Still, at some point we will retire from urban life, and then I will have a half-acre vegetable garden, an arbor for fruit trees, and a kitchen garden filled with herbs.
These fat nubs are my rhubarb, planted last summer and, after overwintering, poking through the soil in the narrow garden plot beside our garage and promising a first proper harvest to come in June!
Rhubarb reportedly prefers well-drained, fertile soil in full sun, but the garden plot where we have planted ours has thin, stony soil and only partial sunlight. It is also partly beneath the eave of our neighbours’ garage, meaning it receives only peripatetic rainfall. But last year it seemed to do quite well, and I’m hopeful that this year we’ll get a decent harvest.
A decade ago this stretch between our neighbours’ garage and our back walkway was dry and stony, and underlain by shards of glass and broken concrete. I resolved to turn it into a garden where I could grow raspberries, and here is what it looked like last June.
I’ve set in a row of old bricks to hold soil and moisture, and every year I amend the soul liberally with compost. To me this strip–about 18 inches wide and about 12 feet long–is evidence that almost any space can be made into a garden with a little care and a willingness to experiment. It does have limitations, though: last year we planted zucchini along here, which flowered but never fruited and eventually developed powdery mildew.
This year I would like to grow a few sunflowers along here, and am tempted to colonize the garage wall with hanging planters for lettuce or other shade-tolerating edibles.
But for now, the big news is that the rhubarb is up!
