Early Morning in Mid-October (in Zone 8b)

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Last Wednesday was Garden Bloggers Bloom Day, and it wasn't until Thursday, when I was outside in the morning with the dogs, that I realized that it was the middle of October, that yet another month had rushed by.  I was late, quite late, posting last month.  I like this ritual - so I went back inside, grabbed my camera. 

This month many of the same blooms were found in my October garden - but different images captured my attention:  the sun filtering through the live oaks, dew on the tiny webs in the grass, red clover seedings emerging (something they have only done before in the early spring).  The yellowing leaves of the chinese pistach and the leaves now gone from the fig tree.  The bronze fennel is going to seed; the persimmons ripening.  Yes, there were blooms - the roses, the salvias, the toad lilies - mexican sunflowers and all types of other sunflowers - flowering maples and zinnias and cypress vines - and I noticed that the Camellia sasanqua 'Cotton Candy' is just starting to flower - definitely letting me know that it is a new season in the garden.

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The flower heads of the Agastache are mostly devoid of color - but the bees and moths still visit - even as they slowly turn brown, in preparation for a first frost that is still a month or more away.  I won't bother them this weekend, as I look around the garden - deciding where I should start.  The cabbages and brocolli are so late now, they must be planted - onions and garlic and shallots need to go into the ground.  I want to add compost to the asparagus beds (with the newly planted 'Purple Passion', added in late summer to the older bed).  This weekend I need to divide my time between the garden and manuscripts and reviews - and perhaps a visit to the Autumn on the Ashley Horticulture Fair at Magnolia Plantation & Gardens.

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During one of the recent lab meetings, Katherine read us a wonderful poem - with such rich lines as '...I learn that everything can ferment' and '...pelicans are God's birds' - perhaps, my own rendition of this lovely poem would say 'in my garden, everything is true'...as I weed the beds, waiting for miracles.

In Antigua
by Kerri Webster
"In Antigua I am famous. I am bathed in jasmine and pressed with warm stones." —Carnival Cruise ad in the New Yorker In Albuquerque, on the other hand, I am infamous; children throw stones and the elderly whisper behind their hands. In Juneau, I am glacial, a cool blue where anyone can bathe for a price. In Rio I am neither exalted nor defamed; I walk the streets and nothing makes sense, voices garbled, something about electricity, something about peonies and cheap wool. In Prague I am as fabulous as Napoleon and everyone knows it. They give me a horse and I tell them this horse will be buried with me, I tell them I will call the horse either Andromeda or Murphy and all applaud wildly. In Montreal I am paler than I am in Toronto. In Istanbul I trip over cracks in the sidewalk and no one rushes to take my elbow, to say Miss or brew strong tea for a poultice. In Sydney they talk about my arrival for days. I sit outside the opera house waiting for miracles, and when none occur in a fortnight it's Ecuador, where the old gods include the small scythes of my fingernails in their rituals and I learn that anything can ferment, given opportunity, given terra cotta. In Paris I'm up all night. Off the Gold Coast, I marry a reverend who swears that pelicans are god's birds and numbers them fervently, meanwhile whistling. Near Bucharest I go all invisible, also clammy, also way more earnest than I ever was in Memphis. For three Sundays I wander skinny side streets saying amphora, amphora.

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Comments

[Layanee]

A stately tree and wonderful light through it! Beautiful images of your garden blooms. I am happy to hear your spaghetti dinner was a success and love that your Dad was 'holding court'. Such a nice picture that conjures...

[kate]

My eyes are lapping up the blooms in your garden ... and the green. How I do miss it along with the colour. I'm suffering from an acute sense of zone envy.

What a beautiful poem ... amphora.