Whole days go by now between hummingbird sightings and I just stood in the Display Garden with my camera poised for a good 15 minutes waiting to catch a glimpse of a monarch. They’re few and far between now. But just this morning I read a news blurb in the local paper that thousands of monarchs en route to Mexico stopped for a rest on Goosewing beach in Little Compton (click here to see the picture). If only they had taken a slight detour westward to visit us… I’m not sure if the monarchs we’re still seeing have come down from the North or if they have just been (re)born here — there are still plenty of caterpillars on the milkweed and butterfly weed plants. But I do know (because I looked it up like I have to every year) that these butterflies are the 4th generation great-grandchildren of the butterflies that began traveling up from Mexico last spring. Unlike their parents, grandparents and greats who only live 2-6 weeks as butterflies, these guys are made of tougher stuff. They’ll live long enough (up to 8 months) to make the journey back to Mexico, hibernate for the winter and mate in spring to circle the cycle back northward again. Wish them luck.

The hummingbirds we’re still seeing (which I can never seem to get a photo of) are making their way down from the North and stopping just long enough to tank up during their long journey to Central America. From what I understand, these travelers should be females and youth because the (older) males fly on ahead. I know some people took their feeders down during those few days when it seemed like our local birds disappeared for good, but if you leave it up – or leave plenty of late blooming salvias, porterweed (Stachytarpheta spp.), honeysuckle, fuchsias, and nicotiana in the garden, you’ll get on the migrant’s list of favorite roadside diners and those birds will return year after year. (Their average lifespan is estimated to be 3-4 years, which is pretty incredible considering their tiny hearts beat up to 1200 times per minute.)  And then don’t forget to put the feeder back out again in April/May.

Are you still seeing hummingbirds and monarchs in your garden?

Our Tuesday volunteer group has been known for years — for ever? — as the “Deadheads” because they work in the Display Garden and traditionally, the biggest summer chore in these gardens has been to deadhead flowers to keep them from quitting and going to seed. While we still ask for help deadheading the annuals in the cutting garden to keep them blooming gangbusters, in recent years we have not deadheaded the other beds as rigorously. Now when the Deadheads ask if we want echinacea deadheaded in the pollinator bed we say, “No… let’s leave their seeds for the birds.” And when they ask if they should deadhead the betony, beebalm, cardoon, teasel, and eryngium, we say, “Nah, don’t those look cool?! Let’s leave them up for the winter.” Perhaps the Tuesday group needs a new name…

I know the betony (Stachys monnieri ‘Hummelo’) wouldn’t have bloomed again because we cut a couple of clumps back last year as a test, but the beebalm (Monarda fistulosa ‘Claire Grace’) might have rebloomed, and there are still buds opening along the echinacea stems. But right now I wouldn’t trade any of those seedheads for their flowers. Not only are they beautiful (in the eye of this beholder) but there is more wildlife activity in that garden than I ever remember seeing before. It’s positively mesmerizing – I’ve been so distracted that visitors have caught me gawping instead of working. Goldfinch, wrens, and sparrows are all vying for seeds and hummingbirds, bees and butterflies are still zinging around working all of the flowers that aren’t ready to go to seed yet.

But there’s a fine line between letting the garden go to seed and letting the garden go. Some gardeners and visitors might think the cardoon seedheads look more like the undead than the simply un-deadheaded. And I imagine that it might make some people nervous to watch them self-destruct and send helicopters wheeling on the wind to float with the butterflies and catch in the grass and on bare patches of soil. But that doesn’t make me nervous. As long as the stalks are still standing upright, surrounded by a colorful garden that looks tended (it’s been meticulously weeded and propped, if not deadheaded) rather than abandoned, and the birds are happy, then I figure we gardeners are as golden as the light that falls this time of year.

Do you deadhead everything up until the bitter end or do you leave seedheads standing for their looks and for the birds? Have you found a happy medium? (Have we? – All opinions welcome!)

The schoolbus yellow rudbeckias foretold the inevitable starting weeks ago. School has started in Rhode Island, it’s about to start in Mass., and suddenly the property has gone quiet. No more laughing camp kids in bamboo grove and vegetable garden, and fewer busloads of adults too. It’s as if a timer went off that says we all have to get back to work now just because kids went off to school. People are already talking about the “end of the season”. I object.

After all, summer is far from over. I’ll admit that some things, like tomatoes, are starting to show signs of slowing down. Last week we filled a crate to the top for the food pantry, and barely covered the bottom of it this week. But the gourds are still reaching for the moon, soybeans are coming, squash are growing (into baseball bats), and even lettuce is leafing. Not to mention all of the “cool crops” that are just getting going all over again.

There’s nothing quiet about the other gardens. They are as crowded and noisy as a schoolyard with pollinating and seed eating wildlife and are so jam packed with flowers it can be hard to find the paths in and back out again. These next couple of months are exactly the time we’ve been working so hard for all winter, spring, and summer. It’s a little bit ironic that right when everyone else goes back to work, we can finally take a bit of a breather to really look at and enjoy the gardens, assess our successes and discuss changes we might like to make next year.

Which isn’t to say that there’s nothing else to do. Late-summer garden chores are some of the most gratifying. We need to keep paths open and welcoming, and prop up the top-heavy leaners but there’s not much deadheading to do (a topic for a future post) and even the weeding seems under control (though we did just get another little downpour yesterday…) But everything we do in the garden, every tweak and adjustment, edit and deletion really shows and looks like an improvement. Check out these befores and afters…

(The last two pictures are to show the difference in the dawn redwood (Metasequoia glyptostroboides) hedge after Fred and Dan trimmed it yesterday – what a difference.) I think the reward for a morning’s or a day’s labor of love – in the garden or out of it – should be to sit back for a few minutes to watch the goldfinch eat echinacea seeds and the hummingbirds work the stachytarpheta, Salvia guarantica, nicotiana, and agastache and soak it all up before summer really does come to an end.

Have you gone back to school/work or are you still enjoying summer in the garden? Do you do a lot of late-summer editing, assessing, and wildlife watching too?

Do you remember the scene in Grosse Pointe Blank where Joan Cusack’s character describes going to her 10 year high school reunion? She said, “It was just as if everyone had swelled.” I couldn’t help thinking of that when I walked through the gardens this morning after 2 weeks away. It was just as if the gardens had swelled. Between hot days and a whole bunch of much needed rain, the garden grew at least another whole dress size. I barely fit down some of the paths. I wish I had taken before pictures of the vegetable garden because I could have sworn that the gourds hadn’t even thought about reaching the top of the arbor and the corn still looked like wispy little grass.

And in a mere 2 weeks, summer became late summer. How I know is because the Joe Pye weed and rudbeckia are in full bloom and the insect and bird activity has reached a frenetic crescendo. This morning I watched a cheeky little hummingbird bully 2 goldfinch away from “his” bamboo grove. Butterflies are everywhere and there are bees and wasps of all shapes and sizes making every garden buzz. Loudly. I hesitate to say it, but I think the light is even starting to change.

I was right about the Lycoris – they have mostly gone by without me seeing them. But the lotus put up more than one bud as it turned out, and I’m thrilled to have caught this one’s glory. And the Sophora (Styphnolobium japonicum) just outside the Rose Garden moongate is in full bloom and just starting to drop.

I still feel like I missed a lot while I was away and yet I’m certain I have a better appreciation for the changes than I otherwise would. Do you like leaving your garden in order to come back to it with fresh eyes or are you tuned in enough to notice the changes — and fully appreciate them all the way through?

I’m off. Way off, as my mom would say. For the next two weeks I’ll be a million miles away (figuratively speaking) staring at the ocean for one week and pulling enormous crabgrass and pokeweed out of my own garden the next, and missing all of the action here. So I have spent the past few days soaking up the view, memorizing (by which I mean photographing) every flower at its exact stage of opening and going by and hanging on because I know that in two weeks’ time everything will have changed and grown.

I’m going to miss the Rose Garden Sophora tree’s burst into full bloom; the naked ladies (Lycoris squamigera) aren’t even showing any leg yet in the Bosquet but will probably emerge like Venus on the half shell next week (like its cousin, Amaryllis belladona did in the greenhouse this week); the lotus in the cement pond has sent up another bud; and the tomatoes in the vegetable garden look like they’re all going to ripen at once.

I hope that you are able to visit in my absence or will stay tuned to see what became more fabulous while I was away. When I get back we’ll also be treated to a guest post by our intern, Patricia Bailey, who thinks great thoughts about horticultural therapy (no pressure, Tricia!) and I’m dying to do a post on the subtle and not so subtle differences between some of the different species and cultivars of my new favorite genus, Agastache. And as a test and a taste of what’s to come, I have finally resized my pictures for easier viewing. Click on them and please let me know if they’re too big now or still not big enough and I’ll make more adjustments when I return. See you in a couple of weeks!