Nights draw in with the time change. We come home at day’s end in dusk, or even nighttime. It is amazing how many drivers leave lights off in the dimmest hours! Car/deer collisions increase during mating season, and it is known that car headlights are one small, effective way to avoid unfortunate accidents.
In the garden
“The garden is not an escape into the domineering control of nature; rather
it requires sustained attention to the networks of life.” –David Haskell, “The Songs of Trees”
Dormancy arrives later and later in the calendar year. The poultry is molting late. Trees are still in leaf. Grass grows, weekly. Annuals continue flowering, weakly. In many gardens, cutdowns of perennials are complete, although crowns often continue to sprout.
It is unclear what would please a raven to reside here, but a new neighbor has announced itself. Its croak says it is a raven, and indeed, the overlarge black “crow” seen being mobbed by the three resident crows seems to confirm that.
The species is generally thought of as resident in boreal forests, mountains, and other wilder, northern places. Apparently this bird is sticking around; its hoarse call has been heard repeatedly in the past month.
Anticipating a rainy spell for establishment last week, I planted some white cedars (Chamaecyparis thyoides) I had grown in pots — no rain until later, but it was dank. In addition to a pinkletink, I spotted a large slug cleaning the bark of a nearby beech. My reaction: Go for it, baby!
Beeches need their bark to be as clean and capable of photosynthesis as possible, since through this miserable beech-leaf disease they are enduring, they lose photosynthesis capacity. Slugs, often despised as icky, are digesters and gleaners of algae and other crud, and assist trees, like that beech, through cleanup.
Speaking of photosynthesis, still-green asparagus ferns continue to send energy to crowns. Cut only once browned, and then mulch beds with compost; use hen-house bedding if available. Check gutters, and harvest fallen leaves and store in trash bags for leaf mold. Find locations where they lodge and collect them there — less work. Check out “chop and drop” as a maintenance technique in this RHS video: bit.ly/RHS_ChopNDrop.
What is that tree?
For those unfamiliar with trees and plants, autumn is a great time to observe and learn to identify what is surrounding us. Foliage or vegetation coloring up in varying stages, different forms, degrees, and hues, makes daily travels more interesting, too.
Practical aspects of plant knowledge include seeing a tall and beautiful tree or shrub in flamboyant fall attire, and being able to name it. Then one can acquire and plant one.
I encountered an enchanting vision of a small tree covered in leafy red sweetheart valentines, years back on an autumn visit to Chanticleer, the Philadelphia-area public garden. It was Disanthus cercidifolius, irresistible in fall and, once identified (no, not native), easy to acquire; I did.
Island hollies
Winter’s winds come from another direction. They cause the need for protected spaces around human habitation, provided by trees, especially evergreens. It pleases to think of the wildlife and plantings being protected as well.
Native hollies (Ilex spp.) include eye-catching shrubs and beautiful evergreens. They are well-adapted and happy in Island locations: in wetlands, on the moraine, and in gardens everywhere. It is hard to go wrong with them.
This year, many females, for these are dioecious species, are heavily berried and are coloring up, while orange and yellow–fruited forms, such as Ilex verticillata ‘Winter Gold,’ thrill both connoisseurs and lay people.
When we built this house, I brought a number of small Ilex opaca seedlings with me from terrain around my old home. They took, and have now grown into mature trees. Pictured is one of them, a female, close to the house. It shelters and forms a complex, above and below ground, of which only a fraction is seen or surmised.
Nandina domestica, once marginally hardy, grows under the holly, warmed with radiant energy from a glacial erratic. Birds shelter in the tree, audibly and visibly. Chipmunks living among the roots below the glacial erratic are skittishly known, and definitely heard. The garter snakes and their young, which prey upon the chipmunks, are seldom seen, but leave their shed snakeskins. One tree and an entire small world, seen and unseen.
Biomes and watersheds are languages
Here, although it has been suggested that “readers never follow links,” I would encourage that following links is a way to explore information further. Although my knowledge and column space is limited, links open the world.
Plant blindness (bit.ly/W_PlantBlind), and its related condition, nature deficit disorder (bit.ly/W_NatureDeficit), are proposed as descriptions for how people spending most of their lives indoors develop and perceive — or not — the natural world from which they are separated.
With debate about Massachusetts DCR’s plan for the Manuel Correllus State Forest continuing, it seems appropriate to bring up the matters of plant blindness and nature deficit disorder.
“If you’ve seen one redwood, you’ve seen them all”; is that the way we feel about trees here on Martha’s Vineyard?
References exist, and here on M.V., knowledgeable humans and resources. Stumped people often ask, quite incredulously, How do you know what that tree/plant/insect is? How can you tell?
For me, it is a matter of wanting to know what surrounds me, and how we share our human lives with that. How does the fisherman know where to hook the bass, or the mushroom hunter to find the chanterelles?
With the living world, the knowledge stems from familiarity with the context, of knowing a specific place. Or more widely, it could be said to be the vocabulary of living on earth — to be able to converse with one’s networks of life.
