Whuh.. wha… huh? What just happened? It’s not 128 degrees anymore? I remember sometime back in May thinking ‘hmm, is this going to be one of those terrible summers?’ And then it was like Manny Pacquiao tapped me on the shoulder and when I turned around- ka-POW!
So now, when I step outside in the morning and it’s nice out, or even blessedly cool, I feel a bit like I’ve just left a full-on metal concert and got in a car with my friends to go home, and for the next twenty minutes we’re all yelling at full volume and don’t even realize it. Only in this case instead of yelling we’re trying to make sure we park in the shade and/or put the sunscreen up, slathering on the SPF 380, and trying to avoid exposure in the middle of the afternoon altogether.
Okay, all right, calm down, it’s over.
There, feel better? Starting to relax? Well, don’t get too comfy, ‘cause it’s ROCKtober, Baby! And it’s just as intense as the summer ever thought about being. I was talking to my brother in Rosenberg the other day about when we could get together with our buddies to hang out and catch up. We started tallying up holidays, weekends at the in-laws’, various fall festivals, and other obligations, and it looks like we’ll get around to it sometime in late February. And the whole season kicks off with fat sausages, dark beers, pecans on the ground, deer running across the road early in the morning with a panicked look in their eye, and pink hogs on everything (you know what I mean, Elginites). BUT, I’m a plant nerd. So the icons of fall for me are Fall Asters in bloom…
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| Fall Asters going crazy |
Fall Mums…
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| 'Clara Curtis' garden mum |
… and the sight and smell of Copper Canyon Daisies.
Pumpkins are pretty cool. Sometimes the faces people give them can get pretty imaginative. The kind of gourds I like, though, are those warty little orange and yellow ones that pop up in grocery stores this time of the year. This year, for the first time in several years, I grew birdhouse-type gourds in my backyard on a twenty-foot arbor I built back in the late spring.
After being shy throughout the summer, now the gourds are popping out all over the place. Every day I walk through the arbor and count how many new little baby gourds there are.
What am I going to do with all these gourds? Well, it’s one of those journey-rather-than-the-destination kinds of things. I guess there will be plenty of housing for the local birds.
October also means rose-cuttings.
Around mid-October is the best time to take cuttings of any roses you’d like to propagate. I have several roses around the house I propagated myself that are still smallish, but it won’t take long before they’re established, full-size rose bushes. One of my favorites, and a very easy one to propagate, is the Green Rose. And strangely appropriate for October, I think.
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| Yep, that's a rose. Sort of. |
Take a cutting of a rose that’s about the thickness of a pencil, and about 2-3 inches long. Cut it so that there is a node (where a leaf comes out) at the bottom, exposed to the soil. Use a nice, loose soil, and maybe even some rooting hormone, like Rootone. Make a hole in the soil with your finger or else the same pencil you used to measure the cutting. Dip the cutting end into water, and then into the Rootone. Carefully place the end into the hole, being careful not to knock off the Rootone as you do. And then cover up the bottom with soil, and keep the cutting warm and moist for the next eight weeks or so. Some folks will make a little tent with a plastic bag or an empty two-liter plastic bottle. The bottle method is nice because you can cut off the bottom and put it down over the cutting, and unscrew the top whenever you need to vent it. Until you vent it, it’s an enclosed system, so it won’t really need much water. Just keep an eye on it and make sure there’s some condensation on the inside. My wife used this method to propagate a Cramoisi Superieur rose, which was the first thing we planted in front of our first house.
So we humans, mostly, love cooler weather. But the plants are digging it, too. Aside from the Autumn-specific bloomers like the Fall Aster and Copper Canyon Daisy (and Mexican Mint Marigold, which has the same flowers but with foliage that smells like licorice), a lot of the plants are breathing a sigh of relief that’s nearly audible, and absolutely visual.
