Sometimes it’s all about timing. John and William Bartram were in exactly the right place, the coastal shores of the Altamaha River in Georgia, at exactly the right time, 1770, just a few years before the tree they discovered there became extinct. They collected seeds, propagated a few plants and named it Franklinia alatamaha for their friend Benjamin Franklin and the site of discovery (a variant spelling of the river – or was it dyslexia?). And even though they and other plant hunters kept searching for the tree, it was considered extinct in the wild within 30 years of its discovery. All of the Franklin trees in cultivation today are descendants of the Bartram’s original collection. Although enthusiastic collection may have contributed to the tree’s early disappearance, it was on its way out already due to a rapidly changing environment. (Sound familiar? Let it be a lesson.) Perhaps if the cultivation of cotton in the area hadn’t spread a debilitating root pathogen, it might have been able to crawl back by layered limbs to cooler climbs where it seems happier today. Franklinia is listed as hardy in USDA zones 5 to 8(9) and has Goldilock’s cultural requirements: Full sun to light shade; rich, acidic and moist but well drained soil; not too dry, not too wet – juuust right. But we easily forgive its persnickety-ness and even give it pride of place because it has the extra-special distinction of extinction.

Timing is everything. Although our Franklinia (a sizable well-established specimen planted in 1969) usually begins blooming in August, it was never ever more beautiful than it is right now. A delayed frost has the flowers continuing to open bright creamy-white against a frame of brilliant reddening fall foliage. Dirr says, “it is best not to become smitten with this plant.” Too late. I brake for Franklinia alatamaha – do you?

I remember walking to school in the fall with a beach-comber’s lurch looking for the most beautiful leaf. When I found it, I memorized it and then kept looking for a more perfect one. I don’t remember ever making anything from my found leaves – some people probably like to press them or make wreaths – I just kept them as bookmarks until they faded to boring or disintegrated. Now that I have a digital camera I collect only pictures of leaves and I have to say it’s not nearly as gratifying and I end up with way too many to look at when just one perfect real one tucked in a book would do.

I also remember that the most strenuous garden chore I had as a kid was raking leaves and I thought that the whole point was to make a giant pile to jump into (preferably before the dog noticed it). It’s funny, the whole raking leaves issue. Why do we do it, really? This article from the Fine Gardening E-newsletter makes the claim that raking is actually unnecessary. The author, Terry Ettinger, recommends mowing the leaves into little bits and leaving them to break down on our lawns and in our gardens. I can think of two reasons not to do that. 1, I have had it with mowing by now and 2, the neighbors already give my garden the hairy eyeball for looking a little wild. I think tidiness is the main number-one reason we all collect leaves and I’m pretty sure Fred and Dan, now into their second or third pass with the blowers around the property, would agree. It’s bred in the bone. Gail and I also rake leaves out of the garden beds and our main reason for doing that is so that we can see beds as blank slates when we do our fall planting. Ettinger says, “observation shows that unraked leaves in planting beds don’t smother shade-tolerant perennials.” You know me – I’ll happily test that theory at home but here we’ll continue to mulch beds with shredded leaves instead which break down much faster than whole ones.

The great debate ends when all agree that collecting the leaves – not just one for a keepsake but as many as you can use in the garden – is what’s important. Whether they stay in bits on your lawn or in your garden beds, are added to the compost or shredded for mulch, we gardeners know that leaves are way too good of a soil amendment to let go of.

How do you feel about raking? And do you collect leaves too?

There is definitely something to be said for the fruits of the fall garden clean-up labor: As the bumper sticker puts it, “Compost Happens”. We have been chipping away at the gardens adding more and more debris to the Mother of All piles. At home my compost scares me a little. I can work for an hour, easily filling one or more wheelbarrows full of weeds and debris and then wonder where the heck to put it because my bins are already long past full. It’s hard to believe now that when I’m ready to use the compost there won’t be enough. Part of my problem is my chosen method. Bins – even big ones – are too small, too confining for the kind of compost my garden – probably any garden – is capable of generating unless I was very very diligent about snipping debris into smaller bits and then turning it regularly. Being a lazy gardener at home, I am rarely diligent about anything. I also have trouble keeping myself from adding fresh debris to the bin that’s nearly finished. (There’s space in that bin!) But even though I am willing to fill up a truck with town compost whenever I don’t have enough of my own, I’d rather keep my own debris in hopes of not having to borrow from the town again. (I know what goes into my own compost – and what stays out…) So now I have piles by my bins and piles by the piles and a deep desire for an easier system and better discipline. What do you do when your garden generates more debris than you have space for? Have you settled on a compost method that works?

Here at Blithewold we make giant piles as opposed to filling bins. Piles are a perfectly acceptable method, though a little unruly/ugly for most home gardens and on the slow side unless they’re also turned regularly to aerate and speed up decomposition. But if you’ve made it through the first 18 months or so waiting for black gold, you’re golden for good as long as you keep on heaping on. Fred and Dan, using the tractor’s front-loader, periodically turn and shift our piles and I wish they’d come to my house too. Our piles are rarely hot – we don’t make lasagna layers of brown and green debris or pay any particular attention to ratios – so weed seeds do tend to survive and I’m noticing that fact much more now that I’m using the compost in our potting soil mix. A layer of black plastic for a few months covering a nearly done pile might do the trick though, we’ll see.

Another bonus fruit of garden clean-up labor is the harvest of, in the case of our Display Garden potager, the Mothers of All beets (Bull’s Blood) and cabbage (Deadon Hybrid). Many thanks to Cathy “Harvest Maven” for providing scale and making sure those final harvests didn’t go anywhere near the compost. Happy Borscht season!