Sunday Silence

Once again I'm going old-school, attacking the autumn leaves with broom for my compost pile and the locust pods with rake for the town to take away.

Locust pods, a constant part of the autumn landscape.
(Margo D. Beller)

"Every man looks at his wood-pile with a kind of affection," according to Henry David Thoreau. Thoreau knew that wood ensured surviving a cold winter. However, eventually the woodpile would have to be replenished. It is an annual ritual, as expected as the seasons themselves.

I do not look at the locust pods I must rake every year with anything resembling affection.

It is that time again. I am outside in the early morning cool on a Sunday, enjoying some rare quiet, where the only things I hear are the scraping of my rake, the screams of the jay and the tapping of leaves and pods falling to the street in the breeze. It is rare because at this time of year the air is usually filled with the roar of leaf blowers and the stench of the gasoline that fuels them. But not at this hour on a Sunday. At least, not yet.

As sure as the sun rises in the east, during the weekdays the lawn services have been blowing every last leaf off my neighbors' properties. Those who don't use a service do the same on evenings and weekends. Also like clockwork, the articles have come out either directly blasting the use of blowers or making fun of them. But that makes no difference to those in suburbia who equate success with a neatly cropped, leafless lawn.

White-throated sparrows have come south to New Jersey.
(Margo D. Beller)

(Two anti-blower articles, as it happens, were sent to me by my brother-in-law, the teaching naturalist. He lets the wind takes care of what leaves fall on his rural NH property. His son, by contrast, uses a gas-powered, backpack-enabled blower on his property. He must wear ear coverings.)

I have a blower, an old, electric-powered model. I find that unless I am blowing leaves into a rough pile for my husband (MH) and me to rake into tarps, it is useless on the heavier pods. So I have been using a broom on the leaves matting the patio and a rake on the pods littering the driveway and the lawn. MH plans to do one last mowing soon to cut the grass he recently fed and mulch the leaves, and I want the pods out of the grass.

As in past years, I silently curse the person who, 40-plus years ago, thought locust trees would be a fine street tree. The locust leaves are very small but their stems fall and clump when raked. The dark brown pod contains the seeds the birds and squirrels and possibly deer eat and then spread through their poop or their digging. 

I recently finished reading a very interesting book on seeds and the lengths plants go to protect the seeds until they are ready to be expelled into the world and create more plants. During the summer the female locust put out greenish pods, some of which dried out and fell to the ground. But the pods didn't start falling in large numbers until they had developed the familiar tough brown casing to protect the seeds. Now, opening one of the pods, my hand was filled with small brown seeds. If I threw them on the lawn I might have a forest before too long.

Part of the fairy ring. (Margo D. Beller)

As I work I see all the ground ivy taking up space, happily fed along with MH's grass. In one area, a strange circle of mushrooms has sprung up, a "fairy ring." I'm not bothering to pick them because they are likely poisonous. The mower will do the work for me. 

There is always some good in doing this raking. It is another thing I do to prepare for the winter when I won't be working in the garden (except for possibly shoveling snow). When I stopped to straighten my back I could enjoy the increasing color of the leaves in my trees - red maple, brownish-yellow oak, yellow elm. The dogwood tree's red leaves haven't fallen but the fruit is long gone, and with it the catbirds. Now I hear the "old Sam Peabody, Peabody, Peabody" of the white-throated sparrow, which finds my part of New Jersey just fine for winter roosting. I am hearing woodpeckers, including a pileated flying over the trees beyond my neighbor's house across the street. The air is cool, the exercise healthy. I've needed exercise after a summer spent mainly indoors due to heat, humidity and illness.

Now I am making up for lost time.  

Black vulture, a southern bird becoming more common
in the north. (RE Berg-Andersson)

At one point something casts a shadow and I look up to see nine or so black vultures circling, Black vulture is a southern species but, like the red-headed woodpecker, it is slowly extending its range northward as the U.S. continues to warm. These birds might be heading south, but maybe not. I also hear Canada geese honking from the nearby community garden. Canada geese migrate but some found suburban yards, parks and office lawns so pleasant they have stayed, bred and become as much of a pest as the deer.

I hear other birds, including a mockingbird making its rasping "this is mine!" call, no doubt guarding a fruiting tree or bush. Smaller birds are flying between the trees looking for insects to pry out of the bark, including the gold-crowned kinglet, another winter bird that typically doesn't hang around my yard. (It prefers pine forests.)

For now, I'm done. Have I removed every pod? No, but most of them. Did I get every leaf off the patio? Not by a long shot. There are plenty more in the trees to come down. They always come down, as sure as day follows night and autumn follows summer.

And, as expected, now I hear a distant leaf blower. By the time I get to the top of my driveway to put the rake in the garage, a second, louder, blower is going nearby. 

So much for Sunday silence.

Flower Power

Every year at this time there is a sudden profusion of potted chyrsanthemums on my neighbors' doorsteps, usually dozens of pots that are paired with pumpkins and the occasional corn stalk or scarecrow.

Daisy-like mums, 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

This is part of the annual suburban fall ritual, along with taking kids apple-picking at the closest farm, using a leaf blower to push off the few leaves on the patio and having tailgate parties before the local football team plays.

Usually in October most flowers are fading and the only color seems to be the tree and shrub leaves or these potted mums on the doorstep. Usually. This year, thanks to all the rain and the sudden return of summer-like weather after a few weeks of cool the trees are mainly green. There are still roses and the annuals that have been out all season still blooming away.

In my yard, most of the plants bloomed and busted and have been cut back except for the late plants: pink flowers on the sedum and the Rose of Sharons, purple flower spikes on the liriope.

Mums are deer candy, so I can't understand why so many people are anxious to feed the critters. But I did have a mum once, when I was new to the neighborhood. I went to a nearby farm and bought a mum with an unusual flower - more like a daisy than a pincushion, with a yellow center and orange petals. I kept that "annual" going for years because I would bring it inside and let it winter on my enclosed back porch. Come spring, the plant - far less full than when I bought it - would go out front and bloom orange and yellow again in the fall. Two years ago, it finally bit the dust.

When I've looked for a replacement I've only found the pincushion variety of mums, which are sold by the gross at supermarkets, garden stores and the big-box appliance places such as Home Depot, usually two or three for $10. No one seemed to grow the daisy type.

Purple aster (Margo D. Beller)

I've also looked for another fall-blooming flower, a purple aster. When I created my garden after we had major work done on this house I put in a lot of plants and learned they should've been avoided. I had a number of asters and quickly found rabbits eating the foliage. So I put in a low fence to keep them from this particular garden plot. Then I discovered the shrubs behind the asters were being eaten from the top. That's when I discovered deer. I've been improving on my fencing ever since.

Once better protected the asters lasted for years until they, too, died off. Even perennials don't last forever. But when I have gone hiking I have seen and admired the pale purple New York asters or the deeper purple New England asters and thought I'd like to have at least one aster again.

Asters are not as popular as mums or even "ornamental kale," the version people put out front rather than the type they don't enjoy eating though they are told it is good for them. If I found them at all they looked anemic or were planted in fancy pots with other flowers. I could not find what I wanted.

Until last week.

There is a garden store with the grand name of The Farm. MH tells me it once was a farm - a turkey farm. But that was a long time in the rural past. it has been much, much more successful as a garden supply store catering to those with money in this particular part of Morris County, NJ. I used to buy things from here because it is not far from where my in-laws once lived. Then I discovered a lot of the same stuff could be bought cheaper closer to home.

Wild asters, Morris County, 2018 (Margo D. Beller)

But last week I decided to visit because it has been known to have plants I couldn't find elsewhere. There, to my astonishment, were two "white mums" of the daisy variety and deep purple asters that, while not wild, was close to what I thought would be nice to have again. I bought one of each. I have kept both in their pots, for now, in my garden behind the netting. They nicely color the space created after I cut back my spent perennials. They have already drawn bees and small butterflies.

The aster will be planted before winter and the mum will come inside and, with luck, bloom again in future years. Unlike many of my neighbors, the plants will be watered and not left to nature to take care of them, and they won't be thrown in the trash when the Halloween ornaments are taken down and the Christmas inflatables go up.

I am happy to finally have these plants again, even though I feel strange for giving in to this suburban ritual.

Searching for Color

You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen.  
― Ernest Hemingway, "A Moveable Feast"

I don't know when this ritual of looking for trees filled with dying, colorful leaves began. Doubtless, the good people of Vermont knew a good thing when they saw it, drawing those of us in New York, New Jersey and elsewhere up to New England to drive around, stay at a hotel, help the local economy and watch leaves color, die and fall without our having to sweep them up.

Ashokan Reservoir, Catskills, NY, Oct. 2017
(Margo D. Beller)

Watch a weather forecast and there's someone telling you which areas are "peak" or close to it. Look online and google "fall foliage" and see what you find. Regional websites, weather websites, tourist websites all trying to draw you to their regions to look at the colorful, albeit dying leaves.

This week I've swept dozens of long, hard, black pods from the black locust tree to the curb to allow MH to cut our lawn one last time before the raking begins. Plenty of leaves and pods to come. I can put some leaves into my compost pile but my pile is only so big and there is always too many leaves.

Rondout Reservoir during a brief moment of sunshine.
This and Ashokan are among the reservoirs that supply New
York City with water. (Margo D. Beller)

In my part of NJ this year the color isn't all that good. Yes, the dogwoods, Virginia creeper vine and some maples are showing red, some of the elms are starting to go yellow and some of the white oaks are going brown. But the overall picture is one of rain-starved trees trying to drop dully, tattered leaves as fast as they can to save energy and thus themselves for next year.

Yards with yellow and red maples are already covered with leaves so thick you can't see the grass. The whine of the leaf blower is heard throughout the land.

And yet, here was MH and me on a recent Sunday driving north to the Catskill Mountains, looking for color. Any excuse to get out of the house. Most of the day was cloudy and breezy and far from the expected 80 degrees, thankfully. At Rondout Reservoir in the Catskill Mountains of NY, a source of NYC's water, there suddenly appeared cormorants, common loons and ringbilled gulls in the water, and a shrieking redtailed hawk over my head.

Below, in the still-blooming daisies and goldenrod were Monarch butterflies. These delicate creatures were holding fast to the flowers in the breeze. They are flying south to Mexico for the winter, an amazingly hard journey for these little fliers.

(Margo D. Beller)

Rondout was our birdiest stop. The other reservoir we visited, Ashokan, had a great blue heron but not much else. As MH persisted in telling me, this was a leaf-peeping trip, not a birding trip. I watched the scenery go by and every so often got a surprise, such as the mature Bald Eagle sitting in a tree over the Neversink River or the female Common Mergansers in a pond near where we stopped to stretch our legs.

But color? Not so much.

Meanwhile, back at home, we've had a spate of clear, sunny, warm days and cool nights. More leaves are turning color. But is MH satisfied? Of course not, and when you read this we will be on the road again, this time in another state, looking for that mystical "peak."