With Autumn Closing In

Bob Seger’s song Night Moves has always been a favorite of mine, in particular the passage in the song when he sings, “with autumn closing in.” He was using Autumn metaphorically to mean a later stage in life, but it comes to mind for me when the seasons change.

Summer whizzed by faster than a speeding train. It seems just recently I was working on opening the pool and now I have closed it as of last week. I look outside and the trees are changing colors. The leaf trackers for New York are showing the Adirondack’s approaching prime leaf viewing. In writing this, I look back on photographs I took and realize it was a busy summer. A summer of fun, work, challenges and rewards. The new raised vegetable garden beds worked well. We had a good crop of vegetables and they are not done yet.

This is a basket of vegetables I put together for the garden club. The challenge was to assemble a basket of at least three vegetables. I had many more than three. Ironically, I was the only member of the group who brought a basket. I was awarded first place in the vegetable category. When there is no competition, it is easy to win.

We have had some beautiful late summer blooming plants. The dahlias did well this year and the reblooming iris was especially showy.

Earlier, I wrote about iris plants ordered from the Historic Iris Preservation Society. I had planted these in pots and nurtured them over the summer. Of the 33 plant varieties I received, 3 did not survive. The rhizomes were not healthy when they arrived, and they did not take root. This left me with 30 iris to plant. Some years ago, we had to have a large maple cut down in the yard. I had tried, unsuccessfully, in prior years to have the large stump ground. Finally, this year the stump was gone. We planted a flame thrower red bud where the maple had stood. The root system of the maple had been enormous with many roots above ground. This left us with a big hole in the yard. In deciding where to plant the iris, I determined I could remove grass to create space for the iris. I dug the grass, like sod, and moved it from the iris bed to the location where the maple had been. It was hard work, but Andrew helped and soon we had two areas to plant with iris.

The first photograph shows the red bud tree, after the deer at the reddest leaves, and the beginning of the new grass. The next photograph, with the shovel, shows the area from where the grass was dug. The remaining two photographs show the iris in place with their little white markers to show us what we had planted. It will be an intriguing mix of colors, heights and names. I am especially interested in seeing what the “Gina the Gypsy” variety looks like.

Nature has a way of reminding us who is charge. We had to alter one of the paths in the woodland garden. Water started to bubble up from the path. We have had enough rain that it has become a steady stream of water. It may dry up in the future, but until then we have a new rill in the woodland garden.

For the past three days we have been pummeled with rain from a nor’easter. We had a lot of wind, which when combined with heavy rain creates a potentially catastrophic condition for trees. Sunday morning we discovered that one of the tall northern catalpas along the driveway had lost the top part of the tree. We were lucky because this was the only major problem in our yard.

Our tree peonies, that I planted from seed, are still growing. Sixteen survived through the summer months. Andrew and I made a trip to the New York Botanic Gardena recently. While visiting, we collected tree peony seeds from their large collection of tree peonies. We collected hundreds of seeds. The potential of again getting the seeds to germinate is quite exciting.

The Garden Club of Orange and Dutchess Counties had a fund raiser in August. I submitted a silent auction item of a private garden tour and dinner at our house. Tongue in cheek, we featured Hyacinth Bucket in our offer. The winning bid was surprisingly much higher than we expected.

Saturday, September 26 our guests arrived to our Burmese Candle Light Supper. It had rained off and on all day. The private garden tour lasted about 15 minutes, when there was a break in the rain, and just as it was getting dark outside. In spite of the weather, we had a lovely dinner with really amazing guests. Andrew was the main chef. I made the cocktail and the dessert. We had fun!

Because our lives are not just about gardening and entertaining, I give you photographs of something that occupied more time than I had planned. I had dropped off Andrew at the train, at 6:30 a.m. on a Monday morning and was returning home. We live off of a private road. I was in the north bound lane of a main road to go onto our private road, patiently waiting for the south bound traffic to go by, when I happened to look up and see a truck hurtling at me at a high rate of speed. He slammed into my car and pushed me into the south bound lane. Fortunately, there were no oncoming cars. I managed to coax the car off the road. When I got out of the car – unscathed – I realized the impact had broken the back axel and the rear passenger tire was elsewhere. The driver of the truck apologized and said he had worked all night and he was falling asleep. Fortunately, no one was hurt, My car was totaled and so now I have a brand-new car. A 2026 Nissan Leaf with a lot of new bells and whistles, and most importantly a longer mileage range. Sorting through insurance and a new car purchase is time consuming and I have not finished yet.

Autumn is a beautiful time of year, and I am looking forward to seeing the leaves turn colors. It will mean more work for me, as the leaf clean up takes weeks. However, being outside on a beautiful autumn day, working in the yard, is one of life’s great pleasures. Since I did not get killed in a car accident and I was not struck by a falling tree, I will be thankful to once again clean up leaves.