The autumnal equinox has come and gone. The light is starting to go out of our days. Flowers, one by one, wilt and brown and fall, their dark stems reminding us just how far the edges of summer had gotten before receding, before beginning their long walk back into the winter. Our marigolds, still holding firm into late summer, have mostly died back along with the other flowers, setting seed for us to collect.
One of my favorite activities in the garden is to collect seeds by the handful and spread them haphazardly all over the soil where they will stay dormant until spring. It is not measured or scientific, not planned or orderly, but I always find joy in seeing who will volunteer, who will come sprouting forward under the specific circumstances of the spring that awaits us. There can always be a little rearranging if necessary but it is nice to let the garden choose its layout. It holds a secret knowledge that I can not possess and that fascinates me.
I have managed to encounter a few more of my wish-list critters in the past month. With the prairie sunflowers reaching their peak and setting their seedheads, the birds came in in frenzy. One afternoon, I happened to be standing at the kitchen window when I noticed a few goldfinches perched on the dried seedheads. Goldfinches are among my favorite birds. I reached for my phone to snap some quick photos and noticed more birds coming closer, perched on the edge of our fence and skittering along the ground after the spilled seeds.
Taking a few more photos, I rejoiced that my garden could provide such bounty! Then I heard a strange tapping noise and, looking out the window again, I saw a woodpecker pecking at the little holes in our fenceposts used by carpenter bees and other solitary bee varieties. It flew to the stalks of the sunflowers and pecked on those for a minute, accompanied by the other birds, and then flew away. All in all, I must have seen about twenty birds in the span of ten minutes, with four types represented. Goldfinches and Chickadees I knew but I had to research the others. I believe they are a Hairy Woodpecker and a Red House Finch. Goldfinches had been spotted before and were crossed off the list, but the others were bonuses that I gladly accept!
We also had the pleasure of finding an orb weaver spider recently. More specifically, it is the Cat-faced Spider, intimidating but harmless to humans. A great friend of the garden, reducing pests and managing insect populations. Terrifying appearance aside, it is a beautiful creature, and I attempted to capture its beauty in photographs which do not do it justice. It is about a quarter inch in size, perhaps the size of a penny, and its web was intricate and delicate. We were able to see a moth wrapped in its web, perhaps leftovers it was saving, and we saw it in action when a fly struck its web. The spider leapt to the fly’s wriggling body to eat it in one fluid motion. Orb weaver can be crossed off the list!
While these were not in our garden, I delight in the fact that I got an opportunity to see them at all. These are some monarch caterpillars on milkweed, as well as a monarch adult landing on some goldenrod. You can tell why I want to cultivate those plants so badly! The fact that they attract monarchs is reason alone, but they also have amazing colors and textures and attract a multitude of other critters.
Also photographed are a couple of yellow garden spiders, not in our garden but neat to see in their element. These things were quite large, about the size of a fifty-cent piece from the tip of their leg to the tip of their leg.
There were also plenty of repeat visitors in our own garden. Lots of bumblebees on the moonflowers, the honeybees landing by the dozen on the sedum autumn joy. Throughout the season, we got damselfly and dragonfly visitors using our tall grasses and flower stems as resting posts but there was no evidence they were going to stay to complete any part of their life cycle. A water feature might attract them for this, but it was enough just to see them stop by. No toads or frogs this year but never say never, I suppose. There are a few weeks left until the first frost.
As I mentioned before, we have started to collect our seeds for next year. I do not spread all of them so randomly, though I wouldn’t mind that approach. We tend to collect a few hundred of each variety in the fall and keep them cold throughout the winter – a technique called cold stratification necessary for certain seeds – and then plant them strategically in the first light of spring. Between the randomly sown seeds and the meticulously planted, we always have some success and some failure and the garden is given many opportunities to decide what it will wear that year.
I really love this season, for many reasons. The heat of summer is dying away but it is not quite the blistering cold of winter. There is certainly an element of comfort and joy in this season that other extremes do not carry. And the final few claps of color in the garden remind you how precious each season is, and to cherish it as much as possible in each new day.
We remember the whole season and how it unfolded, without our control or participation, but we had that corner of the world, our garden, with which we could bear witness and participate in pure creation. How lovely. I love every step of it – the planting, the ready soil, the watering in the evenings, the collecting seeds, welcoming our little guests. We pass from the season of abundance to the season of gratitude, looking forward and looking back, glad to do our little good work.
