Commentary: Garden notes look beyond stress and smoke

In normal years, I celebrate the intermezzo between summer and autumn by planting wine-red chrysanthemums, purple asters and bronze rudbeckia to hide the bloomed-out perennials in my flower gardens. But this is not a normal year. Our summer is ending in a haze of smoke from the monstrous wildfires burning through the West, and anxiety over the continuing threat of the coronavirus.

In my gardening journal, I’ve noted this year’s lessons: Order tomato plants as soon as the first catalog arrives, which may be as early as Halloween. By late January this year, all the tomato varieties I wanted had already sold out. Do not measure, cut, drape and stake down long swaths of black garden fabric to protect the miniature pansies from a predicted freeze. Violas are tough, and the fabric tents embarrass them. Do not bunny-proof the vegetable beds by rigging up an unwieldy barrier of fencing and plastic mesh. Rely instead on Benjamin BadKitten, chief of garden security, to scare off the bunny. Then factor in crop loss due to BBK’s chronic absences.

Step away from the delphiniums and plant hardier, less temperamental perennials, such as hollyhocks, phlox and campanula. My journal will remind me that I’ve dug too many flower beds in too many areas of our yard. When I water and care for them, the beds add color and joy to my life and, I hope, to passersby. But when I neglect them, as I did this summer, they become withered, gray reminders of guilt and lost beauty. Next year I will stop pampering the delphiniums and remember that the flowers in other beds need more time and care.

In late October or before a killing freeze threatens, I’ll ask my husband, Lee, to maneuver our truck into the backyard to haul out my 2020 crop of pumpkins. As if, as if. Every spring I write with childlike confidence that my perky seedlings will grow into heavy, pot bellied pumpkins. Then every fall I do a follow-up column, acknowledging the predictable result: two or three runty squash, each fitting comfortably in the palm of my hand. This season, though, eight future jack-o-lanterns are turning orange in a raised bed in our backyard. Five are already too big to fit in the palm of my hand, although Lee reminds me that I have small hands. One pumpkin has blimped up to the size of a squashed soccer ball, which, for a gardener with my track record, is the equivalent of producing a 200-pound Atlantic Giant.

After a summer of stress and smoke, autumn arrives on Tuesday, and another interval of uncertainty begins. I needed a reminder that even long, seemingly endless seasons will pass. I was digging thistles earlier this month, and my trowel struck a cluster of tulip bulbs fused to a chunk of hardened clay. I knelt on the grass and gently worked each bulb free, expecting to find hollowed-out centers after years trapped in unforgiving dirt. Instead, the bulbs looked vigorous, at least twice their original size. Next spring they will bloom again, elegant with fancy petals, and more resilient from their struggle to reach the sunlight.

Sydney Craft Rozen knows falling leaves, a mug of hot tea and a purring BadKitten will be daily blessings in a new season. Email her at scraftroze@aol.com