So the autumn equinox is over, October mere hours away. I know I have been banging on about fading light now for a month, but it is no longer deniable. This morning saw the last pre-7am sunrise until we return to GMT – and then it’s only temporarily.
I don’t want to sound like a harbinger of doom and dark, though I’ll admit to some seasonal melancholy. I watch the slowing of September seed now sluggish in its growth. Plants that surged only a month or so before are struggling a little more.
There is beauty here in fading. The garden failing, falling. Sunflowers swooning, drooping amaranth over, once-pink seed heads rusting like abandoned tractors in the rain.
Even the nasturtiums are surrendering. Their grasp almost arthritic on the sweet pea poles. Soon they’ll be a mess of ghostly tendrils undone by overnight frost. I’ll gather them and carry their corpses to the compost. I’ll collect and dry the seed, though it is unnecessary. They’ll burst through in the spring without human help.
Coriander is coming, hardy chervil, too, Japanese mustards, pak choi and tatsoi. I have transplanted the late-sown chard to its winter bed (a rhubarb strain, rainbow, bullsblood, Fordhook Giant).
I’ve seen where the pigeons strip leaf to the stems of the young kale, leaving juvenile skeletons. I’ll consider covering the brassicas if they are eaten too fast, though I am uncomfortable with polythene on the plot.
So I will monitor the small changes. I will encourage and appreciate. I will try to ‘be here now’. I am not a Canute. I know I can’t turn the tide. But I can learn to be more thankful for the quiet, the food and the flowers that autumn gardening offers up.
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