The Zen of November

By Bess Taylor

 

 

We’re midway now, between the onset of autumn and the onset of winter. I can all ready hear the clamor from the doomsday people, declaring that everything is dying and all is lost. Oh woe is them. They do this every year and I for one find them tedious, although I’ll never tell them to their faces, as it will only feed the gloom this sort of person seem to relish. But just between us gardeners: they’re wrong, wrong, wrong, and we know it.

 

A person becomes a gardener not when he plunks a pansy into the ground, or mows or pulls a weed or pays someone a heap of money to come around and “do something with the yard”. Becoming a gardener takes personal time and interest. We gardeners are never surprised when the seasons begin to change. We watch weather reports, read gardening books in the winter, and after a time come to feel we knows some plants on a personal level. In either the front or the back of our minds, we gardeners think about gardening all year long.

 

When the warm days become scarce and the frosty mornings more frequent, I do not curse the cold, but rejoice in how much more wonderful a cup of steaming hot tea is when contrasted with grey November clouds.  When the leaves drop from the trees I do not moan, but instead admire their newly revealed structures silhouetted against the honey-colored sunset. When the flowers turn brown and brittle I do not mourn their death, but admire their resourcefulness. Perennials do not waste their energy reaching for the waning sunlight, but leave their summer clothes in a heap and hightail it underground where they grow slowly in their secret lairs until the weather suits them again. And even annual plants, which actually do die each year, invest their energy into neat little seed bundles, which will live again next year. In November the whistle blows. It’s break time. Put away the lawn mower, have a glass of wine and toast all your hard work, all the garden’s hard work, and all hail this well-deserved period of rest. 

 

I think the colors of the landscape here in Virginia’s piedmont are more harmonious in the cold months than at any other time of year.   Of course they are beautiful in the spring, summer and fall, but I always look forward to winter, when they are full of sophisticated brown, gold, grey, olive, peach, and purple tones. Those hues together are restful to the eye and have a kind of understated elegance to them. If I were royalty, I would want my robes done in those colors. To me they suggest grace, serenity, and wisdom. Royalty I’m not, but maybe if I’m clever enough, I can figure out how to echo those regal shades in my winter garden. This would be a good time of year to note what plants might accomplish that end.

 

Of course, there are still things to do in the yard in November. I have yet to trim the iris fronds down into little fans and the peonies need to have their stems cut back to the ground. Most other things I leave for a while to maintain interest, at least until the February winds blow them down. There are leaves to be raked, too. Sometimes I just rake them over the flowerbeds as a mulchy blanket to keep the sleeping flowers warm until March, when I rake them off again.

 

 I am about as fond of raking as I am of weeding, which is to say not much. My husband usually gets it going and I reluctantly follow. But as with weeding, I eventually get into the progressive flow of the activity and start feeling good about it, savoring the spicy fragrance of old oak leaves and the comfortable crunch they make as they are heaped together. As we work we occasionally hear the casual conversation of a flock of wild geese flying low overhead and we stop everything to watch them, almost holding our breath in awe. They beat their wings in a circular motion, as if swimming in air. We wait for their voices to fade completely before continuing the scrape of the rakes. Like all living things, they are just passing through space and time. But they’ll be back this way again.