The Fall time is one of the most beautiful in the state of Ohio, where I have my home and garden. For Central Ohio it is “Football Season”, but for gardeners and nature lovers it is the best weather to enjoy the outdoors full of foliage color, purple and pink aster bloom, bright chrysanthemums, and a harvest of apples. Apple cider that is fresh and unpasteurized may be had from certain farm stands and orchards, full bodied and richly flavored. That is one of my favorite things to enjoy in the autumn.
Walks in the woods, the wafts of smoke from burning leaves, harvesting the fruits of the summer, cleaning out the vegetable patch, tilling the garden for spring, buying and planting bulbs, fixing apple desserts and cooking up hearty soups. The days are often sunny, and the cooler nights change the leaves into exciting tints before they fall into crunchy carpets for our rakes to gather together. Remember jumping into piles of leaves?
Include Colors of Fall in Your Garden
There is a poetry to this season, as it bursts from burgeoning summer to the minimalist editing of winter. My original celebration of Autumn is a small compendium, but there are more quotations for the season … Poems and Quotations for September | Poems and Quotations for October
When frosts appear, look to these vegetable plants to create colorful interest ⇒ Flowering Kale.
Lacing the countryside with purple, varied to pinks and whites, is the family of asters ⇒ the Michaelmas daisies accent my garden during this time.
Orange berries of the Firethorn are for the birds.
In the Garden
This is a time for tasks, not just to ready for the frozen winter, but in anticipation of the next growing season. Trees and shrubs planted now will have a head start for the spring, we always put the spring blooming bulbs into the ground, and it is a joy during the warm afternoons of September and October.
It still can be done into the early weeks of December, but no one is going to guarantee that the gardener will be comfortable doing this task! We get lots of cold rainy days and even some snow once we reach the end of October, unless the respite of a late Indian SummerThe term Indian Summer from the 18th century in the United States. Any spell of warm, quiet, hazy weather that may occur in October or even early November, usually preceded by the advent of freezing weather intervenes. [1]
This is a time for many garden tasks:
Fall Garden Index
September Garden Chores
October Garden Chores
November Garden Chores
I hope you enjoyed the tour through some of the celebrations and tasks that the autumn season brings. It can be filled with many chores to keep you busy, but I hope you take time to enjoy its pleasures, too.
Winter comes all too quickly here in Zone 5, and the memories of golden days in autumn help warm us in the cold days to come. How like our lives! This season teaches us to enjoy the fruits of our labors, the moments of grace and comforts of good things in our lives that we may weather through the wintry times.
