Ah, September! You are the doorway to the season that awakens my soul… but I must confess that I love you only because you are a prelude to my beloved October.
Peggy Tony Horton
I just want to state for the record that in spite of all my bitching about the heat, I do in fact love summer. I love how the growing season returns with an explosion of light, colors, scents and sounds. I love firing up my grill. And most importantly, I love that it’s no longer winter!
If fact, when May and June arrive I want to stand up and sing:
But when the calendar flips over to the month of August, and the blast furnace temperatures that come with it arrive, my joy wanes dramatically. I don’t do well in heat and I never have. I fortunately have never suffered from heat stroke, I have had heat exhaustion numerous times. Sometimes bad enough to land in the ER. So heat and I are not good friends.
I’ve heard that residents of Southern California talk about “June gloom”, and Colorado Rockies fans talk about “June swoon”. Well, I suffer from “August agony” (I couldn’t find anything to rhyme with August). I don’t go out much during the month of August, not even to lounge in my hammock. I pretty much just go from my air-continued car to my air-conditioned house. Truthfully, I enter into a kind of hibernation during this time.
Enjoying the sights and sounds of late summer on a recent bicycle ride in Cherry Creek State Park.
But once the fiery crucible of August has given way to the more moderate temperatures of September, I’m able to get back outside to enjoy the outdoor activities I love: gardening, bicycling, walking and lounging in my hammock. My happiness quickly returns.
But that happiness is tempered by the fact that some dramatic changes have occurred in the outside world during my month-long hibernation, and there are now signs that summer is near the end all around.
The days are shorter and the shadows are longer. It’s much quieter than it was in early summer. The songs of the birds have been stilled, and in their place is the rather unlovely buzz of cicadas and the chirp of crickets.
The world even smells differently.
There are certain wildflowers that, when in bloom, signal summer’s impending demise. Here on the eastern side of Colorado the most obvious harbinger of autumn is when “rabbitbrush”, also known as “chamisa”, begins to bloom.
Chamisa blooming along a fenceline.
I’ve been on a couple of bike rides since the temperatures have returned to more bearable levels. Below are some photos from these rides.
A short rest beside a stream so I could cool off in the long shadows of a wooded area in Cherry Creek State Park. This is the spot where I took of the video seen above.Peeking out from behind its neighbors, a cottonwood branch begins to put on its autumn finery.These white asters are the star attraction alongside the bike path in Parker. Literally the star attraction: aster is Latin for star.
Back at the Vintage homestead, I have become very aware that the lifespan of this year’s garden is now measured in weeks instead of months. This is indeed a sad thought.
While the late summer blooming plants are still strutting their stuff, they are showing signs of fading. Meanwhile, autumn bloomers such as asters, sedums and salvia “azurea” are entering the stage to perform their roles in the garden’s grand finale.
The late season grasses are also getting into the action: they are sending out their seed plumes and their foliage is starting to turn from green to red, orange or yellow.
Black-eyed Susans, a late summer bloomer, are handing the baton off to the fall blooming asters.I even have Chamisa blooming in my yard, even though I didn’t plant it. A chamisa seed blew in from a nearby field and took root here next to the driveway.Sedum “Autumn Joy”, Blue mist spirea and purple asters in the long border in the backyard.Sedums are very popular with bees and other pollinating insects.Salvia “azurea” starting to bloom in a field of asters.
The Salvia azurea seen above has a real tendency to flop all over its neighbors. Which is fine. A transformation comes over most gardeners in late summer and autumn: there is no longer the need for the garden to look so tidy. It’s ok for plants to lean against and mingle with each other.
While autumn is my favorite season, there is no doubt that a strong sense of melancholy comes over me when the end of summer arrives. I’ve spent a great deal of time in my garden this year, and I’ve enjoyed most every minute of it. I have never liked good-byes, yet I must soon bid adieu to the garden.
How about you? How does the end of summer impact you?
“When summer opens, I see how fast it matures, and fear it will be short; but after the heats of July and August, I am reconciled, like one who has had his swing, to the cool of autumn.”
Ralph Waldo Emerson
The Sunday of summer:
I have heard it said that August is like the Sunday of summer. There are, I suppose, several ways of viewing this statement. For students and teachers, August signals the end of summer break and the first day of the school year, which can induce a sense of anxiety and unease as the dreaded day draws closer. Very much like the Sunday blues.
For those who love summer, there is a realization that the brightest three months of the year are now behind us, and no matter how many activities are squeezed in (swimming, camping, BBQs, etc.), there’s no way to deny that summer is inexorably drawing to a close and in just a few fleeting weeks it will be a return to the mundane. Also much like the Sunday blues.
As I am no longer a student, and autumn is my favorite season, neither of these views apply to me. Instead, I view August like a weekend that starts off great but then quickly goes downhill. You know the one: on Friday you look forward to the weekend with high hopes and good intentions, and Saturday is everything you could have hoped for. Then you wake up on Sunday and you have no motivation to do anything whatsoever. You mope around the house all day and then go to bed in a funk, dreading getting up to go to work the next day.
That’s what August feels like to me; for the heady exuberance of May and June have long since passed, and as the relentless heat of August takes its toll a malaise overtakes me. The problem is that it’s so hot outside I have no desire to be outside. I now eagerly await the cooler temps of autumn.
August: a month of transition
July and August are a study in contrasts.
Summer in July just seems to hover, like a hawk slowly circling overhead on warm updrafts. The days stay long and hot, the midday sun stands high in the sky and sunlight is as bright as it was on the summer solstice. Summer appears to be unchanging and eternal.
When the calendar flips over to August, not much changes at first. But as the month progresses, changes become ever more apparent; it becomes obvious that the days are getting shorter and the sun sets earlier and earlier every evening. The sun starts to sit lower in the sky and shadows lengthen. The sunlight itself begins to soften and become less intense. When the last day of August arrives, it is quite evident that summer is all but finished and that the arrival of autumn is imminent.
The reason for the difference is simple; the closer the earth gets to a solstice the longer the daylength gets, but the changes to the daylength get smaller (all this being relative: the changes are much more obvious the further you move away from the equator). Conversely, the closer the earth gets to an equinox, the more dramatic the changes to the daylength become. This year for instance, at my latitude, the days only shortened by 45 minutes during the forty-two days (six weeks) from the solstice to the last day of July. That averages out to a little over minute a day difference.
During the month of August, on the other hand, the days will shorten by almost seventy minutes in just 31 days! That’s an average of over two minutes a day, which adds up quickly.
July seems so unchanging because it is unchanging.
Changes in the garden:
Speaking of change, quite a few changes happen in the garden during the month of August; some of these changes are very subtle while others can be quite dramatic.
In the veggie garden, summer crops such as corn, tomatoes, pumpkins and squash (which have spent June and July growing huge) begin to die off. The corn has grown “as high as an elephants eye”, the tomato plants look like small shrubs and the vining plants sprawl all over the ground and over other plants.
But sometime in August, a switch is flipped and the plants divert all their energy into growing seeds. Ears of corn grow large, tomatoes plump up and ripen and pumpkins seemingly get larger by the hour. While there is still much left to be harvested, the plants themselves begin to die off and may look completely dead by the time August comes to an end.*
More subtly, the late summer and fall blooming perennials stop getting larger as well (spring and early summer perennials stopped growing way back in June) and they too divert energy into seed production. Flower buds begin to swell up in preparation for the fall grand finale. Fortunately, unlike their veggie cousins, the plants themselves still look healthy and will continue to do so until colder weather arrives to zap the foliage.
Early signs of autumn color
Also subtly, the leaves on the trees and shrubs begin a transition as well. The vivid green of June and July becomes flat and faded in August. An analogy (an admittedly poor one) would be to say that the foliage has gone from a semi-gloss to a matte finish. You might even see some leaves already turning to their autumn colors before the month is over.
There is something different in the sound of the leaves as well. What I mean is this: by the end of August when the wind blows through the trees, the leaves are starting to sound dry. Instead of rustling softly in the breeze, they rattle!
Renovation updates:
I thought I would post an update about the garden renovations, not just this from year but from the past couple of years as well..
Below is the section that MrsVintage and I renovated two summers ago. There used to be nothing but a plastic shed in this spot. This is also the section that the cable company tore up this past winter.
Just a few summers ago…July 2018
Below is the section this past spring. The blue columbines perfectly match the blue irises. I wish I could say I planned this, but it was just luck.
May 2020
I took this picture below last week. The plants have had two years to fill in (except the ones that were ripped out of the ground by the cable company) and overall they look healthy. But I’m not completely satisfied with this section. There’s just something missing; there’s no “oomph”. I’m not going to mess with it this year, but will ponder possible solutions over the winter.
August 2020
Now to the birdbath garden. This is the section that I pulled the dying serviceberry out earlier this spring. Below is the initial planting…
Spring of 2020
And now. Most of the plants survived the ravenous rabbit onslaught from May and June and are looking fine. I sowed some sunflower seeds just so the area would look a little more established. Barring any more herbivore destruction, this section should look awesome next year.
August 2020
Now to what used to be the old veggie garden. This was the section that I used to grow tomatoes and pumpkins in. I found the hassle of veggie garden more work than it was worth, so the area lay fallow for several years until last summer when we put in a new perennial bed.
Summer 2019
I like to cluster plants that bloom around the same time together to maximize the visual impact. This section is my “early summer” border so it is well past it’s peak. But it is still looks good and is filling in nicely.
August 2020
Here’s the “desert” garden on the south side of the house that MrsVintage and I put in a few months ago.
Initial planting a few months ago.
As you can see, it is performing beautifully. I no longer need to water this area as these drought hardy plants have already established themselves. I’m really excited to see how it does next year.
August 2020
Below is a pic from last year of my lawn going dormant in the August heat:
“Burned” lawn August 2019. While it looks like it is dying, it was just going dormant and would recover somewhat later in the fall when the temperatures moderated a bit. It was lush and green this past spring.
I’m happy to report that the lawn is handling the heat and drought much better this year. I think that putting compost down on the lawn in early spring helped. I also applied a iron/sulphur mix back in late June that helped keep the lawn green. But I think the biggest factor was watering the lawn more efficiently than I have in years past.
Not so scorched this year.
What are your feelings about August, especially this year?
* Since I no longer grow veggies, I cannot unfortunately post any pictures to show this.
Years ago, the younger Vintage daughter planted these lilies in what would become the patio area. They come back reliably every year, and this year they put on an outstanding show.
When I was growing up, the city I live in used to pave the side streets with something called “chipseal”. Chipseal is tar/asphalt mixed with aggregate (small rocks). Its disavantages include not being very durable, after it is first laid is tends the tar to stick to tires and those tires spew the tar onto the underside of the car, those tires also fling loose rocks into other cars windshields, and it’s a bitch to ride on with a bicycle.
It’s one apparent advantage is that it’s cheaper than most other methods.
Fortunately, the city no longer uses chipseal. But chipseal did have at least one perk, at least if you look at it from a kids’ point of view. When I was an lad and the summer temps reached “fry an egg on the sidewalk” levels, the tar in the paving would start to literally bubble up through the aggregate. Why was this a good thing? Because me and my buddies would each scrounge up some sort of sharp object, say a safety pin or a nail, and use it to pop the tar bubbles. This provided a couple of hours of entertainment on a hot summer day.
I’ll tell you what, these kids today with their PlayStations and Xboxes have no idea what real fun is! (insert eye-roll here).
I mention this just so I can say that if the city were still using chipseal we would be having a bumper crop of tar bubbles this summer, because the temperatures at my place have been above average most every day over the past two months.
Purple coneflowers and the lilies blooming profusely in the height of summer, despite the heat and lack of moisture.
Unfortunately, not only has it been hotter than usual, but the precipitation levels here along the north Front Range have been abnormally low. Those of us in the north are actually lucky, for the further south you go in Colorado, the worse the situation gets. Large portions of southern Colorado are in extreme drought conditions.
To make matters worse, it has also been a very windy summer so far.
So you might be thinking that a hot, dry and windy summer might have turned the Vintage garden into a miniature replica of the Sahara desert. I am pleased to report that nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, the Vintage garden is thriving and I have added a lot of pictures to this post to show just how well the garden is doing.
Hummingbird trumpet in bloom. Sadly, I have never actually seen a hummingbird feeding at it.
But I have to admit that the I am not thriving as well my garden in this heat. I mostly only go out into the garden in the early morning or late evenings to avoid the worst of the torridity. Fortunately for me, the garden at this point of the summer is mostly in maintenance mode. Because the lawn is no longer growing so fast I only have to mow it every ten days or so, as opposed to when I had to mow it every five days as I did in May. Weeding has become easier as well, because weeds don’t like putting on a lot of growth this time of the summer any more than the ornamental plants do. Even the damn bindweed is looking kind of puny.
The only major project I’ve done in the past month has been to finally divide the irises. Checkout the before and after pictures:
Irises before dividing. If left to their devices, these plants would take over the whole damn border. Their rhizomes spread out everywhere and choked off moisture from reaching other plants (especially the daisies).A couple of hours and buckets of sweat later, the irises are divided and replanted. Lesson learned, when the experts say irises need dividing every two or three years they mean it! I will be more diligent about this task in the future.
There are several factors as to why the garden is looking good so far. One is that most of the plants in the Vintage garden are tough and water-wise, adapted to survive and thrive in conditions such as we have here along the Colorado Front Range.
The liberal use of mulch is another big component.
The biggest factor by far is just plain luck. While the rains have been few and far between, the ones that have fallen in my area have proven to be fortuitous in their timing and quantities. A rainstorm on July 4th stalled out over my house and dumped 3 inches of water in as many hours. That was sweet! Another storm dropped almost another 1 inch just ten days later. Because of the amount and timing of these rains, I have only had to water the borders once so far this summer (except the new borders, those plants haven’t had time to develop a root system yet so I water them every couple of weeks).
Alright, enough of the jibber-jabber. Let’s get to the photos:
Yellow yarrow, which started blooming in mid-June, is still going strong. Here in the driveway border it blooms alongside Russian sage and Blue Globe thistle. White and purple coneflower, Russian sage and ornamental oregano mixed in with “Karl Foerster” feather reed grass in the front yard.In late May I sowed some sunflowers seeds in the newly renovated birdbath garden, just so there would be something in bloom in this area this year. I do love me some Russian sage, but I am not fond of this wall of purple and blue. The feng shui is all wrong. The sage and the Blue Globe thistle (to the right of the sage) blend together into one indistinguishable blur. So, I purchased a “Fireworks” goldenrod that I am going to plant between them. This will provide some yellow that should separate and contrast with all the blue/purple. I will wait until closer to autumn to put the goldenrod in. Much too hot right now to be transplanting.
It hasn’t all been sunshine and unicorn farts in the garden. The grassy plant you see below is the foliage of a daylily. I have about half a dozen daylilies in my landscape, and so far this summer I’ve had one solitary daylily flower. I moved this particular daylily, along with a couple of its brothers and sisters, from a spot where it was underperforming to this area a couple of years ago, where I thought they would do better. Since then they have just sulked and failed to bloom. Maybe it wasn’t the location that was the problem. Maybe these are just crappy daylilies.
I’ll give the daylilies one more summer. No blooms next year, they’ll be yanked out.
Black-eyed Susans start to bloom in late July almost like clockwork in my zone 5 garden. I know some people are not fond of this plant. They look down on them and say they are too common and course. But I love ’em. They are tough and they bloom for weeks and weeks, all the way into early autumn. They are a member of the daisy family; and I ask, how can one dislike a daisy?
Black-eyed Susans and ornamental grasses evoke a feeling of the American prairie.
I’ve mentioned in other posts that certain flowers signal to me that a period of transition is occurring. For example, peonies in my mind are a sign that spring is coming to an end and that summer is just days away.
Because of when they bloom, Black-eyed Susans are to me are a (signal?)(notice?)(harbinger?) that while there may still be a lot of summer left, we are at the two-minute warning of the 1st half of the season, and there are no timeouts remaining.
So while I may be stewing in my own juices thanks to the heat, I keep reminding myself to enjoy what remains of summer, for it will be over very soon.
How fares your garden this summer? How fares its gardener?
Postscript:
I was debating on whether or not to water the garden borders this weekend. The soil at the plant roots was getting quite dry. It’s o.k. if the top 1 inch or so of the soil dries out, because the roots are way down in four or five inch range. And it usually stays pretty moist down at that level on even the hottest and driest days; that is if a thick layer of mulch has been applied.
But without some kind of moisture it does eventually get dry down there, and while many of the plants in my garden are drought resistant, some are less drought resistant than others. Plants such as Black-eyed Susans and Brunnera will start to sulk and wilt when the root zone gets dry (true xeriscape plants just laugh at drought and keep on trucking).
I test the moisture in the root zone on a weekly basis by using the device in the photo below. It’s called a “moisture tester”. Very creative. However, it’s a much easier and more reliable means of testing the soil than doing the old method of digging several holes in the ground and then using ones fingers to try and determine if there is enough moisture available for the plants.
Moisture tester on the right and empty tuna cans on the left. I use the tuna cans when watering to determine how much water is actually reaching the ground. This helps prevent under or overwatering. This is the first summer I have used either of these tools. Before, I used the old “best guess” technique. I think my being more accurate in watering is another factor in my garden being so healthy in spite of the heat and drought.
Then Lady Fortune smiled upon me once again, and dumped one and three quarters inches of rain Friday evening. This was followed up with another 1/2 of rain on Saturday afternoon. The root zones in my border are now quite moist, meaning I still have only had to water the borders once so far this summer.
