The Last Rose of Summer

The Last Rose of Summer.

 

 'Tis the last rose of summer,
    Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
    Are faded and gone;
No flower of her kindred,
    No rose-bud is nigh,
To reflect back her blushes
    Or give sigh for sigh!

I'll not leave thee, thou lone one.
    To pine on the stem;
Since the lovely are sleeping,
    Go, sleep thou with them;
Thus kindly I scatter
    Thy leaves o'er the bed,
Where thy mates of the garden
    Lie scentless and dead.

So soon may I follow,
    When friendships decay,
And from love's shining circle
    The gems drop away!
When true hearts lie wither'd,
    And fond ones are flown,
Oh! who would inhabit
    This bleak world alone?
        Thomas Moore

That truly was the last rose of summer. After years of coddling it, treating it for various diseases, and trying to keep the Japanese and chafer beetles from devouring it, I finally removed that rose bush last week. I sang that lovely song as I dug it up, feeling murderous the whole time.

Last Sunday afternoon we loaded up our pigs and drove them to the butcher. That sentence made it sound much easier than it was. We backed the trailer right up to the pen and took down a section of the fence and then it took two strong men and a woman, Kerry and Roger Dunn and Tabor, armed with boards, to get the pigs into the trailer. The pigs were not very cooperative and by the time they were aboard, all the participants were petty mucky. So the pigs are gone now. I will admit that I miss them a little, but I don’t miss lugging feed and hauling water to them every day.

 

Good-bye to the pigs.

 

Our first frost came during the night on Monday. Although the official forecast didn’t predict it, I knew it was coming. The forecast said the temperature would drop to 36° and I always subtract at least five degrees because this is Gold and Gold is cold. So on Monday evening, Stacey and I brought all the potted plants onto the back porch. We went out to the garden and picked all of the tomatoes whether they were red, pink, or green and spread them on the workbench in the woodshed, hoping they will eventually ripen. We gathered in the last of the zucchini, butternut squash, and the small pumpkins and covered the large pumpkins, which were not ripe, with sheets. When I went to bed that night, the temperature was already at 36° and the sky was crystal clear.

 

Plants on the porch.

Tomatoes to ripen.

When I woke up on Tuesday morning, the thermometer read 27° and, although it was still dark, I could see from the window that there was frost. I waited until it got light before I went out to inspect the damage. All of the tender flowers out in the garden – the impatiens, morning glories, cosmos, dahlias, marigolds, nasturtiums, and cannas were damaged beyond help. While frozen and decorated with the frost, the leaves and flowers still looked lovely, but as the day warmed and they thawed, they turned to brown mush. I was especially sad about my morning glories because they’d finally produced flower buds. Too late, too late.

 

Frost.

Frosted dahlias.

After they thaw.

Deceased morning glories.

 

In the vegetable garden, the tomatoes were dead. Frost-killed tomato vines are a pathetic sight. First they go stiff from freezing, then limp as they thaw, then they turn slimy, and then crisp as they dry out. Mine were suffering from late blight anyway, so the frost was an act of mercy.

Dead tomatoes.

When it warmed a little later that morning, I set all the potted plants out again. They were there until Friday night when I expected frost again and moved them all back onto the porch. Soon I will grow tired of moving them back and forth and one of these nights I will conveniently forget to bring most of them in and let them die. Some I will hold on to as long as I can. I grew a heliotrope in a pot this year for the first time. It has delighted me all summer with its intense purple, fragrant flowers. I will try to keep it and the pot of pinks alive on the back porch for as long as I can. I let go of summer reluctantly.

My heliotrope.

Once frost comes, everything instantly changes and I rush on into the final phase of the gardening season. Now I will clear away all the dead and damaged plants. The compost pile will triple in size with all the additions. Now comes the time for digging some things up and planting others. While my dahlias, gladioli, cannas, and calla lilies are coming out of the ground and going into storage, garlic, tulips, daffodils, hyacinths, and crocuses are coming out of storage and going into the ground. I planted my garlic on Tuesday – one hundred cloves, four rows with twenty-five in a row. In a few weeks I will cover their bed with straw and then wait to see them emerge sometime in March or April.

 

Planting garlic.

Speaking of emerging, the last great floral show of the season has begun. The colchicums are starting to bloom. They are strange plants. They send up coarse, strappy leaves in the spring that die back in the summer. Then in the fall, the flowers erupt from the bare soil. I grow two types, single and double. The single ones always bloom first. They appeared on Sunday and were in full bloom by Wednesday. The doubles (which are twice as lovely) will bloom in a week or two. I love to see them.

 

My single colchicums.

I picked all my peppers on Tuesday. The frost did not damage them in their enclosed glass box, but they were ripe and ready to pick. I picked more than a peck and, unlike Peter Piper’s peppers, they will not be pickled. I chopped up and froze the bell peppers. The chilies I strung to dry. They are very pretty on their strings. They look like Christmas decorations.

 

Picked peppers.

Chopped peppers.

Strung peppers.

Speaking of Christmas decorations, I finished trimming my red onions and getting them ready for storage. They are the prettiest onions I grow. As I gazed upon them in their basket, they looked like Christmas ornaments to me. Why do I have Christmas on my mind? It is too soon to think of it.

 

My red onions.

While I was moving potted plants on Tuesday, I heard a squeaking sound and when I investigated, I found a mouse’s nest in one of the pots under some marigolds. The mother mouse ran off and left three tiny babies in the nest. I couldn’t bring myself to kill them outright, but rodents are my enemy, so I pulled the nest out and set it in some weeds on the other side of the road. Maybe the mother mouse will find her way to them. I felt heartless and a little sad to do it. It made me think of some lines from Robert Burns’ To a Mouse On Turning her up in her Nest, with the Plough, November 1785.

Wee, sleeket, cowran, tim’rous beastie,           Little, cunning, cowering, timorous beast,
O, what a panic’s in thy breastie!                    Oh, what a panic is in your breast!
Thou need na start awa sae hasty,                   You need not start away so hasty
    Wi’ bickerin brattle!                                        With bickering prattle!
I wad be laith to rin an’ chase thee                  I would be loath to run and chase you,
    Wi’ murd’ring pattle!                                        With murdering paddle!

But Mousie, thou art no thy-lane,                    But Mouse, you are not alone,
In proving foresight may be vain:                    In proving foresight may be vain:
The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men          The best-laid schemes of mice and men
    Gang aft agley,                                                    Go often askew,
An’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain,            And leave us nothing but grief and pain,
    For promis’d joy!                                                For promised joy!

Still, thou art blest, compar’d wi’ me!            Still, you are blessed, compared with me!
The present only toucheth thee:                      The present only touches you:
But Och! I backward cast my e’e,                   But oh! I backward cast my eye,
    On prospects drear!                                        On prospects dreary!
An’ forward tho’ I canna see,                          And forward, though I cannot see,
    I guess an’ fear!                                               I guess and fear!

The mouse's nest.

We’ve been watching news of the fires burning in the West. So far all of our family members out west are safe – from the flames at least. All of them are feeling the effects of the smoke. Here in the east, 3,000 miles from the fires, we are also feeling the effects of the smoke. Our sky has been hazy, the sunlight yellow as it is filtered through the smoke high in the atmosphere. They tell us the drop in temperature that brought us our frosts last week was the result of the smoke preventing the sun from warming the surface of the earth. We’ve had evenings when the sinking sun was huge and blood red through the haze. On Wednesday evening, Stacey and I drove up through Steuben County, New York, to pick up one last clock from the Amish clock repairman. As we drove, we kept stopping to view the setting sun. It was beautiful as it sank through the haze.

 

On our drive.

On our drive.

Knowing they would not survive another frost, I brought in all my big pumpkins on Thursday. There are eight of them. They are not the best sort of pumpkin for eating and I did not grow them for that. Miriam and Hannah plan to carve them later in October.

 

The pumpkins.

Apple time is almost over. Only two trees remain to be harvested, the big Northern Spy tree and the Golden Russet tree. My Northern Spy tree is the oldest, most reliable, and most versatile tree in my orchard. The Golden Russet tree is a light cropper and its rough, brown-skinned fruit isn’t pretty, but it is called the Champaign of Cider Apples, and for good reason. Both trees are loaded with fruit and are almost ripe. In a week or two we will pick them and take them to our friend Levi Borkholder to be pressed into cider.

The Northern Spy.

The Golden Russet.

We made a quick trip down to visit the Thayns this weekend. We left yesterday morning and just got back an hour ago. It was a lot of time in the car – eight hours round trip, but worth it. We went down to celebrate Hazel’s eighth birthday. The Fosters were there too. We went to Hazel’s soccer game. We had a birthday dinner. We had a great weekend together. We are all getting together in October for a bigger celebration when Hazel will be baptized. When we arrived home, the house was chilly – chilly enough for Stacey to actually agree to light the furnace. That usually doesn’t happen until later in October.

 

At Hazel's soccer game.

Hazel's birthday.

Florence and me.

The whole gang.

This Tuesday we will arrive at the Autumnal Equinox. At 9:31 A.M. Eastern Daylight Time, day and night will be equal in length as the sun crosses the celestial equator. After the Autumnal Equinox, the sun will rise later and nightfall will come sooner as we head into the dark days of the year. The world responds to the lessening of light by growing cold. Annual plants set seed and die. Deciduous trees drop their leaves and go dormant. Animals like bears and woodchucks prepare to hibernate. I withdraw from my garden world into a world dominated by the wood stove, warm clothes, books, and dreams of distant spring.