Green Acre: Mums, Pansies, and the Baby Bird

Caladium in the garden and window boxes keep getting better and better. / Photo by Stephanie Cavanaugh.

By Stephanie Cavanaugh

THERE’S NOT MUCH to be done in the garden in mid-September but admire what worked and bemoan what didn’t.

Last week it was cool, fresh, with sunny skies. This week the sky remains blue, but the temperature is rising and there’s no rain in the forecast. Mainly it’s nice for lazing about on the back porch doused with high-octane mosquito spray.  

The leaves on the shrubs and trees are as green as in mid-summer, with not a hint of fall color. The flowers that flower are flowering; the others aren’t.  

It’s too late to do some things, too early to do others. The stores may be stocked with candy corn, pumpkins, and mums, but it’s too early for Halloween (though it’s been October since July at Costco)—the squirrels will do in the pumpkins, and the mums will frizzle in the heat.

Mums in this heat are such an interesting subject. Year after year you’re beguiled by them (in this case I do mean YOU, not me). How cheerful they look marching up the front steps, plonked in pots in the front garden. So yellow! So orange! So fall! Makes you want to pull your boots out of the closet and kick some leaves.  

Tomorrow the first flowers will start to shrivel and blacken. You deadhead them. The next day more of them will have wilted. You clip off their nasty little heads. As a handful of days pass, you snip and snip and suddenly! Pffft. Well. That was a waste.

(Boots in this heat are another interesting subject. Have you noticed all the young ladies trotting about in their leather boots and mini-skirts this summer (I trust this is not you), their perfectly pedicured feet sloshing about in sweat. Not sexy.) 

It’s too early to plant spring flowering bulbs, such as tulips: There needs to be a snap in the air. Later October is good, but you can foot-drag into December.  I know the bulbs are  being sold now, but hold off. You don’t want to disturb the last gasps of summer with your little hole puncher. 

Pansies are tricky. Thay are coming in now, and they’ll bloom through the winter and well into spring, making them a great addition to the garden. The issue is lifting annuals that are still delightful, in some cases at their best, my window-box caladium being an example, to plant the pretty-faced blooms. 

If you buy the pansies now, you’ll have to figure out how to keep them happy until it’s time to transplant to borders and window boxes and such. I confess that there have been years when I’ve hidden a flat so well that I forgot about watering, with the expected results. On the other hand, if you wait to buy pansies, you’ll be chasing around looking for them, eventually settling for droopy, stringy leftovers. 

Same goes for ornamental cabbage and kale, which come in for far too much disrespect. Much as I dislike twee, and most particularly fairy gardens, these ruffly pops of purple and pink and white are such delightful fillers. Get the smallest you can find for window boxes; it’s easier to get them settled. As with pansies, they’ll keep going through snowstorms and winter freeze, and be an even more splendid sight come spring. 

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Baby bird update! Kamala has been tiptoeing out of her box and is feeding herself from a little dish of bird seed softened with water. I added finely minced carrot the other day and her expression was positively orgasmic. 

Mama Cooper still watches over her, but Papa Goldie is losing patience—fluffing his jealous feathers, chasing Kam around the cage floor and back into her box, then snuggling up to Cooper for a little romance. 

I have to tear myself away from the family drama.