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A warm but blustery day brings even more feelings of the growing Autumn. The wisteria leaves are yellowing and dropping as it recedes into its winter’s rest. Most of the other deciduous trees in my corner of California are also turning and today’s winds send them floating to the ground in cascades of yellow and brown.

While the wind does some work in stripping the trees of their foliage, the first heavy rains of the season really bring them tumbling down. This is especially true of the locust tree. It can go from a blaze of gold to a jumble of brown sticks in one rainy day. Nothing is ever wasted in the garden, though, even beauty. The falling leaves make a thick golden carpet around the base of the tree and the adjoining path. This is always one of my favorite images of the fall.

Tidying up

Whether you live in a northern or southern climate it is the time of year when we all need to be tidying up and putting our gardens to bed for the winter. Before the rain and snow comes you will want to get the leaves off your lawn. Wet leaves, especially large heavy ones such as sycamore and maple can effectively smother a lawn if they are left alone. Leaves can be an important part of composting, rather than bagging them up to go to a landfill, use this bounty as an opportunity to start your own compost pile. Here are a few composting links to get your started:

<http://www.vegweb.com/composting/>

<http://www.compostingcouncil.org/>

<http://www.cityfarmer.org/homecompost4.html>

<http://net.indra.com/~topsoil/Compost_Menu.html>

<http://www.cityfarmer.org/wormcomp61.html>

Even if you don’t have a compost pile you can still put your leaves to use. You can mulch them up using your string trimmer or leaf blower/vac/shredder. This mulch can then be used to winterize your roses or other garden beds. This can help prevent the top layers of soil from freezing and thawing again and again during the winter, which will help to protect delicate roots. In some cases, I have seen gardeners form a wire cage around sensitive shrubs which they then fill with dry leaves. This helps to protect the shrubs from frost, wind and dehydration damage.

It is important to remember, though, that any leaves or prunings that show signs of disease or pests should be disposed of in the trash, not in your compost pile or flower beds. This would just allow the infection to spread when Spring arrives.

Hoping for rain

I have been doing a few simple additions to the garden in preparation for our coming rains. My son, Joseph and I, carefully spread a packet of California Poppy seeds in the street-side bed and the newly planted wildflower bed where a pine tree used to stand. This fits in wonderfully with my purple and gold theme for the front garden. I also re-planted a purple mum border that used to exist in the back garden. The small mums had died out about 2 years after we moved in, but a fortuitous plant sale allowed me to cheaply and quickly replace them. Maybe a few more gestures like this can entice the rain to finally fall.

Keep digging!

Douglas

What was happening a year ago (or more) in my garden? October 24, 1999 Purple & Gold October 1996 Willows and Compost

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