On the cusp of autumn

At the end of first of September it is hard to imagine Fall being right around the corner. But, as the days grow notably cooler, and the light of dawn crests later and later, we begin to feel that coming change of season, and can almost smell it in the air. Fall is the time I gather up all of my garden notes made during the season and put them together to try and make sense of next year’s plans. My routine schedule also adjusts and allows for early morning seed starting for next year’s Spring annuals instead of early morning harvests.

I used to be a fan of beating the heat all together in peak summer months and harvest all the flowers in the pre dawn hours with only a lantern to light my way down the rows in the cutting garden. That only lasted for a short time as I quickly realized that my favorite bumble bees were sleeping in the flowers and I was disturbing them . They are hard if not impossible to wake up when they are asleep, and I found that only the warmth of the sun animates them into awareness. It was to my surprise a theirs that I had a studio filled with local hitch hikers from my harvest, and they were certainly in a different place than they remembered when they fell asleep in a pollen drunk coma the night before!

They hide underneath the disc flowers like echinacea, rudbeckia, and zinnias, and snuggle into the petal folds of fuller florets like marigolds and ball dahlias. This morning there were dozens tucked in to the Caryopteris later than usual because of chilliness in the air.

Once the sun warms them they spring to life in their dance from flower to flower, competing with a nice number of butterflies this year, along with all of the other pollinators. It’s funny to watch the sequence as the sun hits one side of the garden and everything begins to hum with activity, flowers gently swaying and bouncing from the weight of some of the heftier bumbles traveling from bloom to bloom. While over on the far end the bumbles still slumber on the flowers lazily in the shade, until the sun slowly, and gradually, stretches over the garden to warm their wings awake.