November Chores and Pleasures

IT’S ALMOST HERE. Winter, I mean. The clocks set themselves back last night while we slept. Remember going around the house, taking clocks off walls and down from shelves and manually resetting them? Another thing to be nostalgic about. I woke up here in my Long Island cottage and the cable box, computer, and iPhone had all take care of themselves. All I had to do was reset the stove. It’s nice to be up early, with the golden light of morning creeping through the woods…even though it’s “really” not that early.

Yesterday I built a compost bin out of cinderblocks and I’m quite unreasonably proud of the thing. Had been Googling “mulch with whole oak leaves,” thinking I might just rake them off the paths and lawn and into the beds and woods and have done with it. I’m in the middle of what amounts to an oak forest, and there are a lot more leaves to come. Meanwhile, my garden helper hasn’t shown up in weeks, not even to collect the money I owe him. He must be busy raking other people’s lawns.

I’d started a leaf pile next to my kitchen-scraps pile, but it was growing unmanageably large and I wondered how I might contain it. Wire mesh and metal stakes? I looked in the cellar to see what I had: nothing. Then I remembered the pile of cement blocks stashed under a large evergreen at the back of the property. They were too heavy to throw away and I thought they might come in handy someday for building a retaining wall, a foundation, a …compost bin? OK, it’s not a thing of great beauty, but it does the job. I would have made it higher but I ran out of blocks. Anyway, I got great satisfaction re-purposing something that was there already.

I’m out in the country for a few weeks, all things being equal. Naturally, I have a long list of garden chores. Plant ‘minor’ (small) bulbs in the blank space under the magnolia. Wrap burlap around deer-vulnerable and winter-burn-prone shrubs (that’s a big job, to be delayed until I’m feeling particularly energetic). Keep watering and spraying (anti-deer). Spread compost in the perennial beds. Rake, rake, rake.

There’s a can of sunflower yellow Rust-o-leum paint at the ready for this Dada-esque tractor seat, found in the house when I bought it 2-1/2 years ago. Another long-postponed project, but just the thing for a quiet fall evening in the country, listening to Philip Glass or Jagjit Singh, pot of ridiculously nutritious soup bubbling away on the stove…

I’m trying to savor the things I have accomplished here in this garden, so easily forgotten once they’re under control. The wisteria that once had a choke-hold on everything has been vanquished. The agepodium several landscape contractors wanted to Round-Up into submission has largely disappeared, through patient hand-weeding. The backyard, once impenetrable, now an open expanse. And many more.

A dear longtime friend of mine is very ill, making me acutely aware of life’s little pleasures. I’ve been going to yoga at KamaDeva in East Hampton; yesterday’s class ended with this prayer, which I’m moved to share in this month of Thanksgiving. (Don’t read on if you’re not a fan of this sort of thing. I am.)

Love before me Love behind me Love at my left Love at my right Love above me Love below me Love unto me Love in my surroundings Love to all Love to the Universe

Peace before me Peace behind me Peace at my left Peace at my right Peace above me Peace below me Peace unto me Peace in my surroundings Peace to all Peace to the Universe

Light before me Light behind me Light at my left Light at my right Light above me Light below me Light unto me Light in my surroundings Light to all Light to the Universe

Mulch Mountain

THERE’S A NEW TOPOGRAPHICAL FEATURE on my Springs, L.I., property that isn’t making me happy. It’s a hill made of mulch — 5 cubic yards of it. That’s a lot. It sits in my driveway, waiting to be deployed as a weed suppressor, giving off a slight barnyard scent. And the thing of it is: I didn’t even want the stuff.

In bloom this week: astilbes — a good crop, since Deer-Out

It was wood chips I asked for. I wanted a rustic look among the shrubs in front. I didn’t envision this fancy Hamptons-looking black mulch. But Dong, my garden helper, did. “Everybody want this,” he kept saying. “Better for weeds.” And so he showed up with a dump-truck full, bought just for me.

Goatsbeard

We often have communication problems. I don’t speak Dong’s language, Vietnamese, and his English is… just this side of unintelligible. We do all right face-to-face, with gestures, but static-y cell phones add to the problem. Then there’s his reluctance to admit he doesn’t understand.

Evening primroses starting up; they’ve spread since last year

I do like him, though. He’s knowledgeable about gardening, hard-working, and fairly reliable.

Seed heads of alliums, which I like almost as much as last month’s flowers

And there he was with a truckload of mulch. What was I going to do? Ask him to take it back, like an undercooked burger? I’ve never been that assertive with workmen. Men of any kind, really. Or hairdressers, of any gender. So I said, OK, go ahead, dump it <sigh>.

Lychnis

It took me two hours of shoveling last night to get perhaps one-fifth — no, that’s too rosy an assessment — one-eighth of the way through the pile. I’m determined that all day tomorrow will be devoted to mulch-spreading.

Foxgloves! Well, one foxglove

Oh well, not a tragedy. Other aspects of being in the country this week are making me happy, including the many more things in bloom than last year (thanks partly to Deer-Out) and a general sense that my garden is under control — as long as I don’t let down my guard.

Houseplants on holiday

Raking Leaves is a A Fool’s Errand

THAT PHRASE POPPED INTO MY HEAD TODAY as I raked leaves. It’s an impossible task, because every night’s breezes bring a fresh layer. Yesterday I observed my next-door neighbor raking, raking, raking, making huge piles for the town pick-up. Today, I glanced into his yard and saw that they’d been replenished. But I happen to know he rakes for fun, so it’s OK.

Daffodil bulbs ready to go in the ground at Bridge Gardens

Besides raking, I’ve been busy with other fall landscaping chores, inspired partly by a two-hour workshop I attended on Saturday at Bridge Gardens in Bridgehampton called “Putting Your Garden to Bed for the Winter.” At least half the discussion was about which hydrangeas bloom on old wood and which on new. I can’t have hydrangeas at all because of my deer friends, so I tuned out.

Below, transplanting clumps of hydrangea ‘Annabelle’ at Bridge Gardens

I was reminded of how important it is to keep watering, especially after such a dry season as we’ve had. I’ve been moving hoses around from individual tree to tree so they get soaked in the root zone (particularly some of the big evergreens that look parched), pulling up spent annuals, planting three new aronia (chokeberries) as part of my ‘tapestry hedge’ in front, and moving other things from places where they’re not thriving to places where I hope they will.

Below, annual Japanese fountain grass, perennial geranium ‘Roxanne,’ and Saturday students at Bridge Gardens

Just as I was coming to the end of today’s to-do list, the UPS truck pulled up with my bulb order from Scheeper’s. It’s not a big order — just 10 ‘Gladiator’ alliums, 10 gorgeous lilies I couldn’t resist, even though they need sun and deer like them (I’m going to plant them by the front deck and keep a spritz bottle of Deer-Off handy), and 100 Spanish bluebells for a wooded area in the backyard middle distance that I haven’t gotten around to doing anything with.

How Bridge Gardens deals with deer, below

I’m feeling a bit of urgency, as I’m moving into my Brooklyn pied-a-terre next Monday. I won’t be around much in November, and I want to leave my East Hampton place in good shape — well-watered, nicely mulched, cozily tucked in for winter.

One of several unusual types of elephant ear at Bridge Gardens, below

Fall Planting to Foil the Deer

THERE’S A GROUP OF FOUR — two does and two yearlings — that lives here, too. And they seem to feel my garden is their pantry. When I was kneeling out there today, putting in some of the supposedly deer-resistant perennials I just bought, I looked up to see a lithe brown creature eyeing me as if to say, “Planting something tasty? I’ll check it out later.”

These Hamptons deer, pressed as they are for grazing space, have been having a picnic here these last few weeks, chowing down on begonia, astilbe, caladium, cranesbill geranium, Japanese anemone and other things generally considered deer-resistant, reducing them to sticks. I haven’t been quick enough on the trigger — the pump on my bottle of “Deer Out,” that is. Anyway, it’s not very effective.

Yes, yes, I’ll get a deer fence in due course. Meanwhile, it’s fall, the nursery sales are on, and I’m determined to outwit the deer by planting only things they find absolutely inedible. There are a few.

I’ve been to three area nurseries: chic Marder’s in Bridgehampton, pedestrian Agway, and old-school Hren in East Hampton. At discounts from 30% to 75%, I bought the following, which my experience over the past year tells me should be OK (along with careful reading of labels and asking questions, though I’ve learned not to wholly trust the labels or the answers). The reason there’s only one or two of some things in the list below is because that’s all they had left — I would gladly have bought more at these prices.

I’m working the variations on things I’ve already got that have survived, with emphasis on colored and variegated foliage.

• 3 Salvia ‘May Night’ – deer-proof stalwarts, easier to grow than lavender

• 2 Buxus sempervirens ‘Auero-Variegata’ – boxwoods edged in yellow – tiny now, 8′ at maturity

• 1 Berberis thunbergii – ‘Rose Glow’ Japanese barberry

• 2 Lonicera nitida ‘Lemon Beauty’ – never heard of these before – another variegated shrub that will eventually be 3-6′ tall

• 2 Pleioblastus viridistriat – dwarf bamboo – more yellow

• 1 feather reed grass

• 1 Ligularia dentata ‘Othello’ – my 4th type of ligularia – the slugs go for them, but the deer don’t

• 1 Stachys ‘Silver Carpet’ – lamb’s ear – a narrow-leafed variety I don’t have

• 1 Brunnera macrophylla – chartreuse heart-shaped leaves

• 1 Euphorbia ‘Glacier Blue’ spurge – blue-gray and Mediterranean-looking

• 1 Itea virginica ‘Sprich’ aka Sweetspire ‘Little Henry’

• 2 Bergenia cordifolia  – edging plant with glossy, red-rimmed leaves in fall

I spent this first day of the Jewish new year in the garden instead of the synagogue. I worked from morning ’til night putting new plants in, moving others around, weeding as I went along, and finally spreading five bags of compost and mulch (no – finally taking Advil). More than once, I thought of something I read long ago in a gardening magazine. An elderly woman was asked the secret of her beautiful garden. She replied: “Work like mad in spring and fall, and you’ve got it made.”

Pull, Plant, Move, Weed, Shear, Lop…it’s May

SO TODAY I’M OUT IN THE GARDEN, following a nice morning rain, yanking out white-flowering, foot-tall garlic mustard before it seeds, and I uncover this fellow, above, with the pretty yellow markings. I’m not much for wildlife photography — deer and wild turkeys tend to move off by the time I get my camera focused — but in this case, I was able to run all the way into the house for the camera and find him right where I left him.

The warm weather has brought out tons of weeds, most of whose names I don’t know. Wisteria, bane of last year, is in evidence, but much reduced. There’s going to be some intensive hand-labor around here in the weed department.

If anybody can identify the weedy groundcover, below, please tell me. And how to get rid of it.

Last night, I made a list of garden chores for the week:

• Pull garlic mustard.
• Plant grasses from Steph (my friend brought over three hefty miscanthus clumps, which went in today).
• Plant four nandina ‘Gulfstream’ (heavenly bamboo) and two ilex glabra (a type of holly) from Costco; they were $13 each and very healthy-looking. Which I did – but before doing it, I had to move 5 rhamnus frangula (alder buckthorn) bought last year from White Flower Farm at great expense and still only a few inches tall. Bah. They’re not going to serve as screening between myself and my next-door neighbors, so I put them in a sunny spot in the far reaches of the backyard, where I can forget about them instead of being aggravated every time I open the front door and see how pitifully small they are.
• Plant remaining things from upstate — threadleaf coreopsis, 1 kerria japonica, 1 viburnum. All done this afternoon. Check!

But the list went on, with things un-done.

• Move chelone (turtlehead) and Japanese silver ferns up front.
• Pull crabgrass and other weeds from “lawn” area.
• Shear grass in “lawn” area. I use the term advisedly — it’s increasingly more weeds and less turfgrass. Notice I don’t say “mow.” I don’t have a mower.
• Cut down browning, unattractive juniper.
• Lop Rose of Sharon scattered about the property (that which I didn’t get around to earlier in the season).
• Pick up branches and winter storm damage throughout.
• Plant more flowering trees.
• Get a handle on nameless invasive weedy groundcover.
• Collect more rocks for path edging.
• Mulch.

Suddenly I sat up in bed with my list and scribbled one last item:

• “Call help?!?”

I’ve got a flyer here for “Spring Yard Clean-Up Specials.” That’s what I need: a spring clean-up special.

My garden labors today were eased by the example of a woman my friend Caren and I met last night on our evening constitutional down to Maidstone Beach. We were admiring the plantings in front of a tidy cottage — they reminded me of my own baby beds, with many of the same things I’ve planted, edged with similar rocks — when a woman came forth with a watering can. We complimented her handiwork and got a tour. She’s fully exploited everything deer-proof — irises, peonies, weigela, ferns, grasses, and on and on; set things on pedestals made of found stone; positioned everything in the right place so all is thriving and green; made the yard welcoming to birds with a bird bath and feeders.

Her name is Lois, and she must be well into her 70’s. Lois has something I don’t have, but am trying to cultivate: patience. She’s planted a wisp of red barberry here, a tiny fern there, and she’s clearly OK with waiting for it all to happen in its own good time. Whereas I want the lush, billowing effect immediately, if not sooner. Here’s Lois, not worrying that the garden better happen quickly because she may not have that much time left to enjoy it, but enjoying it as it is right now.

With Lois as inspiration, my four hours in the garden today were more relaxed than usual. I’m doing it. It’s happening. In its own time.