Fall Color

For someone like myself, who grew up in Massachusetts, fall color is an Issue. Moving to Virginia was traumatic for a lot of real reasons, but among them lurked my aggrieved sense that fall was no good. In fact, Virginia falls are wonderful, but different. What they lack in intensity, they make up for in length. Long after New England has tucked its cheek into its mitten, down here we are still enjoying the mahogany of oak leaves, the jolly crinkle underfoot, and clear, wonderful weather. I learned to love the bright yellow of poplars, the glow of hickory, the layered purple of ash, the long blooming of asters. Those maples, what a vulgar, instant display!

At least, that was in the old days. Somethng has happened to fall. I have heard rumors that it has happened in New England, too. The colors are, well, okay. They always varied, from year to year, but the really good years have not been here for a long time. I've heard a lot of excuses. It was dry, and the leaves crumbled; it was wet, the leaves were moldy; the temperature was too steady, it didn't rise and fall the way it needs to. But there are more ominous possibilities. Acid rain has changed the chemistry. In the soil? On the leaves themselves? What chemistry? I'm not sure. Or global warming has meant warm falls without the early frosts necessary to spark color. I don't like these explanations, but they eat at me.

This year, in Virginia, we're still way ahead of good color time, but the dogwoods, which are always first, have begun to turn. Wild dogwoods in Virrginia have been attacked by a virus (?) called anthracnose, but they're not dead yet, and this year it appears, so far, that the color is going to be bright. The goldenrod, oddly enough, is also a brighter yellow this year, no doubt because we had a lot of rain in late August, as the blooms were opening. So I'm waiting to see. Night temperatures have fallen below average (however "average" is calculated any more) several times, so perhaps we'll have a good fall.

Gardening Shrinks

Today's Washington Post includes an article by their wonderful gardening columnist Barbara Damrosch, who reports some sad statistics about vegetable gardening: in 1894, over 33% of food was hoemgrown; in 2004, it was 1.5%, and the lates report is down to 1.26%. Michael Pollan's Omnivore's Dilemma may be popular, but one and a quarter percent isn't really very much. People don't have time, they don't have land, they don't have -- this is the kicker, in the suburbs -- sun. No one dares to cut down a tree for a garden; trees are sacrosanct. And of course, trees do a lot of good -- they cool houses immensely, and even do a little sheltering to keep them warmer in winter. They are beautiful they provide privacy and wildlife habitat, they sequester carbon. They also fall on power lines, require prodigious raking, and shade out vegetables.

I used to try to garden in a ahlf-sunlit patch of yard. I thought maybe I could overcome the light deficiency by building soil, by eager tending, by selecting certain crops, lettuce and spinach and parsely, that I somehow thought would do with less sun than a tomato. Which may very well be so, but now that I have a garden in full, relentless sun, my old efforts look pathetic. You need sun! Vegetables seem to be made out of radiant energy. Horse manure is only an afterthought.

Summer's End

We went away for three weeks. Gardeners should never do that. It was hot and dry; the tomatoes burned up; the cucumbers crashed; the weeds reach my waist. I'm going to have to mow the garden before I till it, and in any case I'm waiting for rain, which Ernesto may bring. This morning the sky is hopefully dark.

What does wildlife do, when it's this dry? When the cars raise clouds of dust in the roads? The river, of course, is not quite dry, and there is heavy dew in the morning. But the flowers are drying and losing their nectar -- not much help for a butterfly or a hoverfly. Wasps have been crawling all over the fennel, as it goes to seed. The other morning we watched a doe with two large but still spotted fawns, grazing along some mowed paths near the house. The doe remains alert, ears cocked, watching our blind windows, taking short mouthfuls from something in the meadow -- honeysuckle? The fawns eat where she ate. Then one of them jumps, on his spindly legs, does a 180 and lands surprised. Hey, where'd Mom go? Oh, there she is, hoo boy, better try for a quick drink of milk. Oh, okay, I knew I was getting a little old for that. Trot trot trot. And then they disappear, suddenly, without making a sound or seeming to move.

The goldenrod is in bud, like ladies in waiting. The first dim brush of pink is on the dogwood leaves. The sun goes down a little earlier.

Flies in the flowers

On July mornings I take pleasure in watching the insects that take pleasure in the flowers beside the deck. These are conflowers (echinacea) and bee balm (monarda), which I grow because deer don't eat them. I also have here a few black-eyed Susans and gaillardia, but the bugs seem to take no pleasure in them.

The monarda have a double or triple circlet of tubular petals around a central core -- my husband says they look like gals in tutus. I think they look like a crowd of women with fantastic hairdos. In any case, a number of insects with the capacity to drink deep, as it were, keep working around them. There is a swallowtail butterfly who sticks his proboscis into the tube and visibly sucks hard, pulling his little head into the opening, reminding me of a nursing child. Another big visitor is the syrphid fly, also known as a hover fly, which I once thought was some tiny hummmingbird, until a friend set me straight. On the central cone, we get insects that look like bumblebees but are also varieties of flies -- the difference is that flies have 2 wings, bees have 4. There are several varieties of actual bumblebees, that especially like the coneflowers, which are composites whose tiny flowers are spread open to these bees. I have also seen, to my great delight, a few actual honeybees -- delight because, in recent years, because of the mite that has been destroying the larvae, I have seen no honeybees at all. We used to keep bees, and find them by the thousands in the wild sumac, but between bears and disease, all had disappeared.

Which brings me my final thought for the day. Honeybees are not native. All of the pollenation in North America was once accomplished without them. Europeans brought them to the coast in the 16th century, and they spread inland faster than the Europeans did, so settlers naturally thought of them as native. They were already here! And by now, we can hardly call them alien.

Looking Again

Break in the weather, and we went tooling around a bit. Yes, there ARE oak trees coming back, of course. Just not right where we are, but that does probably have to do with shade and mowing -- and who knows, perhaps the next good mast year will bring us a crop of trees, too.

At this season vegetables start pouring out of the garden. I am overwhelmed with cucumbers. I thought they would all die of wilt or cucumber beetles, bot no such thing -- this year they seem unblemished. Potatoes are ready, onions are swollen up to the size of baseballs, tomatoes just starting to ripen. Nevertheless, the best thing in the garden is herbs, and so trouble free, and so uneaten by deer! Tarragon, thyme, oregano, rosemary, fennel, sage, and a small hedge of basil. Mostof them just grow on, year after year. I have learned to toss them almost carelesssly into most of the things I cook. It isn't at all like dried herbs. And besides, I feel so housewifely, going out to grab a handful while the pot boils.

Thinking about woods

The biggest old trees on our place are white oaks. They are growing along a high ricky fenceline, where they must have been allowed to grow and provide shade when the place was all pasture. The biggest young trees are all tulip poplar. I've been thinking about this. Oaks are noble trees and, they say, provide the best wildlife food. Why aren't they coming back?

I think I've learned a couple of reasons. One is that deer like oak seedlings. Our wholoe woods is, I think, heavily impacted by deer browse; there is very little understory, trees that would have gotten started in the last 5 years or so, when I feel as if we have had a population explosion, just from the number of sightings and deer trails and beds and so forth.

But I've also learned something more complicated. Oaks are "shade intolerant;" they need to grow in sunlight. They also grow very slowly. The tradeoff they make -- as all plants make tradeoffs -- is that they are drought tolerant. They tend to put their first energy into the root system, rather than into top growth, and their leaves are thick and constructed so as to lose less moisture. But this means that they are less efficient at photosynthesis, and ergo they grow slowly. We've had some dry years but we are basically in a moderately wet area with regular rainfall, and this means that oaks are easily overtopped and shaded out by the quick growers: maples (also beloved of deer), tulip poplars, maybe hickories? Which we also have.

So, why were oaks ever here in the first place? Because oaks, which put so much early energy into their root systems, thrive when an area is regularly disturbed. Especially, for instance, if it is burned. Older oaks have thick bark and usually survive fire, when lesser trees die. Young oaks that are cut down can do quite well coming back as "stump sprouts," i.e. they just keep on growing, using the good root system that they had. And since Indian times, this part of the country has been regularly burned and logged. So the great oak forest of the midatlantic, which was there at the time Europeans arrived and for 300 or more years after, is in part the result of human activity. Now that fires are regularly put out, and there are fewer oaks around producing acorns, and we are not cutting stuff down (much), and the deer have no predators, good-by oaks.

We could also speak of gypsy moths. Well, nature is complicated.

Here I Am

I have a cabin in the piedmont region of northern Virginia, near a tiny village called Hume. For a couple of years, I've been from time to time researching the flora and fauna and the environmental history of the place, trying to get a grasp on what grows and flutters and burrows here, and I'd like to share what I know and learn from you, whether you live nearby or whether you have a similar curiosity about your own place.

We have owned 66 acres for about 25 years, during which the land has evolved from old pasture to sumac hells to young woods. I also keep a vegeable garden and grow some flowers, so the deer population is of great interest. This week a wild turkey came strolling past the kitchen window, pecking at the grass and perhaps snapping at the air. What was she eating? Or is that just her way of looking around?