Autumn Blues

This is a long gardening post. Prepare to be bored to shreds, after the jump.

I came to the conclusion the other day that I’m not really a gardener. I’m a plant collector.

I grew some grand lotuses in large tubs in the front yard. This bloom was seven feet in the air.

Tropical waterlilies are the lovely plants, and thrive in large ponds down South where they are hardy.  Their leaves and flowers get absolutely huge. Fortunately, merely confining them to small pots and small tubs effectively miniaturizes them for the insane Northeastern plant collector.

Closeups of these beauties, I grew two varieties:

I have to grow them out front because its too cool and shady in the backyard for them. They can be brought indoors in little tupperware containers for the winter, making special care to keep any dormant tubers they may have produced, which will provide many new plants in Spring.

I’m not taking these back in this year. Whatever is left in their pots will be composted.

Most of the activity this month concerns taking cuttings and saving things from the cold, and bringing things indoors for the Winter.

I’m getting better about throwing away plants. My house just can’t be an arboreum all friggin Winter anymore.

(Except for the orange trees, some begonias, a camellia somebody gave me, those coleus cuttings I took, the pretty red thing I don’t know the name of, my favorite taros, and a few other special pets.)

This mess is in my back porch. Yes, that leaf really is that big- about twenty inches long. I was going to let these all die off. But of course there was this conversation with one of my store customers, and he wants me to save him some sprouts, especially off the black taro. So I’m going to trim him up a few pieces. Because I’m nice.

Nice always involves extra work.

Here’s a couple of the hardy waterlilies that live in the backyard pond now- mousing over the pic will show the cultivar name:

There’s seven varieties of them in that little pond, ranging from minis with lilypads and blooms the size of quarters, to Barbara Dobbins up there, who has pads fourteen inches across and flowers eight inches in diameter. I’m thinking of composting her, too. She’s a hog.

Autumn is the season of death, after all. The blue tropical lily pot this morning has one leaf in it.

This morning when I was walking around the yard, several Monarch butterflies passed me, all headed due South into the wind.

Another birthday in the garden, another year in the can.