Category: Peaches

A Look at an Autumn Garden

A Look at an Autumn Garden

Goldenrod As Chester gardeners greet the second week of September, they are keeping a weather eye out for a possible hurricane but, to date, the community has experienced only a warm south wind and heavy showers. Many of our favourite perennials, having outlived their terms, have vanished from local gardens but a number of hardy wildflowers, like goldenrod in its many varieties, are adding splashes of colour to the landscape.

A cloud of native asters (volunteers) brighten the edge of a more formal bed, where the sword-like leaves of gladioli stand stiffly as if defending the plot from additional invaders.

Asters
One perennial that is welcome at this time of year is the Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’, with its gradual colouration that develops from pale pink to deep rose over the next few weeks.  


Not so welcome is the change seen on some perennials and shrubs after a nocturnal visit by the ever-roaming white-tail deer.  In one garden this year, they have pruned several rose bushes, three yews, a stand of hollyhocks and a young Weigela bush, a section of which is seen in the photo below. After suffering from deer brouse in the spring, this shrub has again been assaulted this summer when another ten healthy growing shoots were recently nipped off. Sometimes we doubt it will ever grow tall.


And, despite best efforts to provide a barrier composed of a fishing line and netting, we were unable to prevent deer from reaching into a rose bed where they sampled the tender shoots of a rose named for our favourite composer – Mozart. The stark ends of several stalks show the sad result of losing yet more buds and blossoms.

Still, in every garden there are always compensations, like a rambunctious clump of bright pink superbells, spilling over a rockery wall…


…Or the surprise of finding a newly opened day lily (Sweet Child), still damp from a recent rainfall, long after we’d thought all the blooms were finished for this year.

Now that the peaches have been harvested, sampled and turned into jams and chutneys, we can turn out attention to the apple crop. The apples on this tree are a variety called “July Red” ( which is curious since they ripen in September).  An earlier variety, the NovaMac, with its crisp tart taste, is a favourite in this area. It was  especially developed as a Nova Scotian hybrid of the standard Mackintosh. 

"July Red" apples
To close this post we add another photo of a Monarch butterfly, supping from the tiny blossoms of a Buddleia bush. This is by way of a reminder that the next meeting of the Chester Garden Club – September 17 – will feature a presentation on these marvellous and somewhat mysterious creatures.

Monarch butterfly on Buddleia

Images from a Summer Garden

Images from a Summer Garden

Having enjoyed one of the sunniest
and warmest summers on record in our
area, I felt it time to look back over
some of the pleasures to be found in and around our Chester gardens.


 

Perennial sweet peas are a delightful surprise every spring when they appear at the foot of a wrought-iron fence and soon send out massive tendrils and blooms that create a privacy hedge.  The yellow flowers above belong to a tall artichoke plant (a volunteer that sprang up under a cluster of lilacs). Seasoned gardeners may also spy a young goldenrod peeking out from the background.

Wisteria drapes gracefully over a pergola, providing a shady nook on a hot day.

A pale pink rose whose I.D.  tag was lost almost as soon as it was planted in June (sigh…) has produced innumerable blossoms now that it is encased in a net cage designed to foil the deer who had dined on the bush a few nights after I had planted it.  (Perhaps one of the deer also ingested the tag!) 

Of course, deer weren’t the only wildlife to appear in our gardens.  We’re home to raccoons, pheasants and foxes, as well as birds and bees. The bee below is finding nectar and pollen in a rose blossom  – the fragrant Blanc double de Coubert. 

In early summer, gardeners and tennis players alike were supervised daily by a pair of hummingbirds who liked to perch high on a weathervane where they could survey the action in all directions.  Although they drank from strategically placed feeders, they also had access to honeysuckle vines and many other natural sources.

The standard bird feeder was a busy meeting place for chickadees, goldfinches, song-sparrows and purple finches.  Larger birds,  like mourning doves, pheasants and crows, hung around the base of the stand picking up fallen seeds.   


A future project includes learning to shoot with a video camera so that I can capture scenes like the dance of the Monarch butterflies that were busy quenching their thirst on a Buddleia in full bloom.


As perennials die back, the old reliables –  annuals, such as nasturtiums and petunias  – continue to flaunt their bright colours.  But, as this newly harvested crop of peaches attests, summer is slowly but surely drawing to a close. 

newly harvested ripe peaches

summer sunset
On a positive note, the approach of autumn means the start-up of classes, clubs and workshops designed to energize us all during the cooler months ahead.  By coincidence, having recently enjoyed the presence of a large group of  beautiful “Monarchs” in our garden, we have just been advised that the first fall meeting of the Chester Garden Club will feature Roberta MacDonald,  who will give an illustrated presentation on  Monarch butterflies.  The  meeting is scheduled for September 17, 6:30 for 7:00 PM at St. Stephen’s Parish Community Centre.