bringing Autumn into flower

Each year, for the past five or ten years or so, about this time of year, we've planted a half dozen of so chrysanthemums along the North side of the driveway. They add a nice touch of autumnal color until snow banks bury them. Come Spring every single year, every single one of them has died, although they are supposed to be perennials. Too much snow and ice and not enough protection in the Winter.

driveway mums

Photo by J. Harrington

We had been contemplating replacing the mums this year with some asters. The asters we planted near the road on the driveway's North side two years ago were inadvertently dug up by the Daughter Person. The ones we planted last year on the South side of the garden suffered the same fate as our mums. We fairly quickly learned to be more intentional with our hunting and fishing efforts, rather than "chuck and chance it. Our gardening and horticultural education is proceeding much more slowly. Older brain?

wild asters by the roadside

Photo by J. Harrington

Since we now know to try to protect this year's mums (straw mulch?) to see if any survive, we'll look for alternative locations for the asters we were considering substituting for mums. Maybe they'll do better since climate change has now brought the border of hardiness zones 4a and 4b near to us. Not long ago we were in zone 3.

Chrysanthemum

by Josephine Moore

Petals, defying gravity

in life, strong in youth,

using water for bone

structure, open

with hydraulic home-grown

Mechanics. The delicacy

of pressurized blooms

is reinforced by dry

spells: arid soil

leaves weakened gardenry

To wilt as the flower-heads droop

to their weedless graves.

But harvest chrysanthemums

at their peak full-

ness, press them among plum

Pudding recipes and bible

verses, squeeze moisture

from xylem and phloem,

and they will stand

crisper than freshly-cut mums.

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