Autumn in New York (and Maryland)

Yesterday was one of those beautiful fall days. Sunshine all day and blue skies and yet the temperature wasn't too hot. Just a glorious day! It reminded me of how much I enjoy this time of year. I love fall because most of the gardening work is done (no trees on my property, so few leaves to rake). And because it is finally cool enough to enjoy being out in the sunshine. (Here in Maryland, from May through August it's mostly way too hot to enjoy being outside). It seems as if the flowers know that their year is ending, so they have this surge of bloom before the frost comes. If we have some rain, as we have this fall, everything is green and healthy, even the grass, which doesn't do well in our summer heat. I remember loving autumn when I was a child, growing up in western New York. The sugar maples turn bright red and put on a magnificant show up there. (Here in Maryland, our trees mostly turn gold or mahagony - nice, but can't compete with New York.) The house where I grew up had two rows of maple trees in the front yard. Strangely, I don't remember the color, but rather that when the leaves fell my parents raked them into huge piles tht were wonderful for jumping into. I made houses and forts and mazes of them, before Dad raked them across the sidewalk into the street. Then some evening, he would set them ablaze. What a grand sight that was! Often several neighbors burned their leaves at the same time, so we had bonfires up and down the street. As the flames died down, I was allowed to poke a long stick into the ashes and see what was still red hot. Sometimes, as a special treat, I toasted marshmallows over the embers. The smell of burning leaves is still one of my most pleasant memories of fall, although I don't really care for toasted marshmallows any more. Of course now we are not allowed to burn anything outside and we compost our leaves or let the community gather them up. This is no doubt better for the ecology, but I have to admit that I miss the smell of burning leaves.


Because yesterday was too nice a day to work inside, I started clearing out and cleaning up the jungle in my backyard. I cut back the forsythia (a lot, but not enough) and tied the branches of the hydrangea and the beauty bush to the fence, so that one can actually walk from the gate to the deck steps and on to the back door. (The previous owner planted a hydrangea at the bottom of the steps in a border bed that is only about one foot wide. What was she thinking? Every summer it strives to climb the steps, usually succeeding, and every year I cut it back. I don't know who is winning this battle - perhaps the bush and I are tied). I also pulled up some wildflowers (weeds?) that I mistakenly planted out back a couple of years ago. Warning: don't transplant wild goldenrod into your flower beds. It is very aggressive and will multiply and take over all available space. I appear to have pulled it all out, but no doubt some will have survived and will come up again in the spring. There is more work to be done in the back. I haven't yet bagged up all the bits I cut and pulled up and there is more trimming to do, but it's a start.

I read somewhere that 'weeds are only plants growing where they don't belong'. Don't fall for that line, no doubt written by a weed lover. Weeds are far hardier than domestic flowers - think of wolves vs. dogs. Weeds root anywhere, including in the mulch over the weed barrier on the path. They are very hard to pull up. If something comes up easily, you probably pulled up a nice plant, not a weed! And weeds multiply rapidly and spread widely. Sometimes they magically transport themselves from one spot to another. A few years ago I found a purple-leafed plant growing in my back yard. It was very attractive and resembled a coleus, but not one that I had planted. It was there for a couple of seasons, then disappeared, only to appear in the front yard this summer. It has taken over a section of the front bed and spread into the lawn. I rather like it, although I haven't been able to identify it, so I'll leave it alone and see what happens next year.

Thank you, Pat and Mumzy for your welcoming comments. I'm glad to know that there are other bloggers out there from my generation. So many of my friends are not really comfortable with the world of the Internet and Blogging and suchlike. (I'm not all that comfortable myself, but I'm trying.) My daughter's friends are all online, but many of mine don't use computers at all. I'm very addicted to email because my kids live far away (England and Arizona), but I have trouble remembering passwords and user names. I write them down and then can't rememer where I put them! I think my personal memory needs to be rebooted or maybe upgraded, but at least, I don't need a password in order to access it!