In the last post I mentioned that Gail and I just picked more vegetables for the East Bay Food Pantry. It’s no accident that we still have veg to pick. Back in the middle of September we took a little gamble and seeded down a big quilt of lettuce, rows of super-sweet and tiny early Napoli carrots, spinach, and Scarlet Queen Red Stems salad turnips (meant to be eaten raw!) It was late to be seeding but we also put row covers over the lettuce and spinach just in case, and the gamble (more of time than money since seeds are cheap) paid off big time. Given that the weather has been so mild with no real killing frost yet, we wouldn’t have even needed the row covers – uncovered lettuce in the raised beds is fine. When we cleaned out the vegetable garden in October we also left other tough-as-nails cool crops standing, like kale and Swiss chard. What’s truly surprising to me is how surprised the folks were to receive more fresh veg now, this close to winter. Granted, this is the first time we’ve made an effort to grow vegetables past summer but is it truly unusual to take advantage of fall?

I’m no vegetable gardener but that might have to change. Spending that hour or two harvesting at the end of November was like a little revelation. This is doable. And especially this time of year, when fresh veg tastes like a luxury (if you could see the crowds of people at Bristol’s new winter farmer’s market grinning over the gorgeous clubs of Brussels’s sprouts, bales of lettuce, carrots and enormous sweet potatoes you’d think none of us had ever had eaten well past August) a little extra effort at the end of summer – even if it’s a gamble – seems more than worthwhile.

This harvest has inspired Gail and me to make a resolution (a little early for New Year’s but what the hey) to get back out in the vegetable bed in March to at least seed down peas and greens in the raised beds under row covers. And who knows, maybe next year we’ll shoot for a four season vegetable garden à la Elliot Coleman.

Are you still eating from your garden?

If it wasn’t for the thick morning fog we might not know that the seasons are in an indecisive transition. And if we didn’t crash through strands of fog-lit spiderwebs with every step we wouldn’t know we were sailing into fall.

It’s transition time for the gardens that feels a little like waiting out a slack tide. We’re still enjoying all the activity in the garden; excited to see brand-newly blooming flowers (a subject for another post) and we’re certainly not ready to let go of any of summer’s color or seed heads. Instead we’re spending more time on patrol for skrunky leaves and tenacious weeds. If you’re in the same boat, trying to keep your garden looking its best for a few more weeks, try cutting back old leaves from Japanese anemone (leaving the seed heads, of course.) There’s a life-raft of bright green foliage coming up inside the old – it makes a bigger difference than you’d think. And removing brown leaves from everything else – dahlias, phlox, veronica… is almost as gratifying as deadheading ever is. On the other hand, some plants blacken in a dramatic keep-able way. I wouldn’t dream of cutting down these cardoon yet (above, left) or even any of the echinacea.

We’ve got big projects on the horizon that we’re itching to begin as soon as the mansion closes for the season (after Columbus Day weekend; reopening the day after Thanksgiving for Christmas.) This winter the North Garden wall will be restored(!) and we need to move all of the plants out of the adjacent beds and into the vegetable garden-slash-nursery bed. The deadheads started making room in there yesterday (instead of deadheading.) We’ll also take that opportunity to get into the other North Garden beds to amend soil and relieve years of compaction. We’ve got another big perennial haul-out planned (we’ve had it with the daylilies and enormous asters) and we’ll do our usual musical-perennials with everything else, trying to get it just right for next year.

But for now we wait, fuss, and plan. Is your garden in transition too? Are you starting fall projects now or waiting until the last minute?

(Click on any picture for better view of webs, spiders, weeders, and fog.)

Along with everyone else along the Eastern Seaboard, we’re battening down the hatches and doing whatever we can to prepare for what looks to be a sizable storm. Some of us (that’s me) can’t help but remember last year’s hurricane-that-wasn’t: Good old Earl passed us right by and it’s tempting to think that maybe forecasters are crying wolf again with this one. But then there are others of us (not me) who were here for Hurricane Bob, 20 years ago last week. During that storm, Blithewold lost about 40 trees and another 40 plus died soon after. So we’re all (me too) watching this storm closely; doing what we can to prepare, and taking it very seriously.

Gail, Tara and I moved our most fragile container plants along with any that might act like sails or projectiles back into the greenhouse yesterday. And then Gail and I spent part of today moving a few more inside, tipping others on their side, and memorizing the gardens and taking pictures. It is a beautiful day – the calm before the storm…

The Rock Garden is the most vulnerable garden on the property because it’s so close to the Narragansett Bay shore. The storm surge is expected to be a big one and as it will be coupled with a high moon tide, that garden will likely be submerged sometime Sunday. And the North Garden is so exposed at the top of the Great Lawn that it’s the most likely to be wind damaged. We re-staked all of the dahlias and have to hope for the best. In the display garden, which is fairly protected by the bamboo grove and hedgerow of trees along the property line, we re-staked the dahlias and decided to allow the burnet (Sanguisorba tenuifolia) to flop onto crutches (a crisscross of bamboo stakes to protect other plants) so that they maybe won’t get wind-whipped. And Dick, Gail and Tree (Blithewold’s director of communications) went through and picked every ripe and almost ripe tomato from the vegetable garden.

Fred and Dan removed the shade sails from the arbor, some garden ornaments, and all of the outdoor furniture. Blithewold’s curator, Margaret has been securing the mansion’s archives – moving everything away from windows and covering furniture and artifacts with plastic. We’ll be closed for visitation for the whole weekend; tours have been cancelled and the tent will be taken down. The only thing left to do is wait – and watch.

Are you glued to the forecast too? What are you doing to prepare your garden and home for the storm?