“We are in November now - pressed against the windows like an excluded ghost.” E. M. Forster
As I write this it is another glorious golden late October day. The killing frost has not touched my garden yet and the tender salvias gleam blue and coral backed by the brilliant foliage of the trees. The fall raspberries still sweetly ripen and kale, chard, and arugula are still abundant. But I know November is coming with a cold shock. The refuge that the garden has given in this difficult year will be ending, replaced by a world frozen and uninviting.
November feels especially heavy this year. There is always a sense of loss when the garden goes into hibernation, but the added stress of the threatening pandemic, the social restrictions, and the odious spewing from Washington make the loss more daunting. Gardeners are aware of the annual cycle of life. We think from a seasonal perspective. And yet I find November a most difficult month. The hard frozen earth has no blanket of snow to protect and soften it. The gray skies and bitter winds somehow feel more brutal than in the depths of winter.
“Look around
Leaves are brown
And the sky is a hazy shade of winter.” Paul Simon
Other people have expressed their appreciation of November. They have mentioned the beauty of the bare silhouettes of leafless trees and low angled sunlight and warm wood stoves to sit by. Of course I get outside, take walks, and appreciate the changed landscape. I need to move past the feeling of loss and look forward to the return to the garden. It happens every year. Maybe it is more intense this year because I have reached the biblical “three score and ten” years, a sobering milestone. But printed seed catalogs still arrive in the mail, ever earlier every year. I will spend a good amount of time thinking of the future garden.
Thinking back to this past growing season, there were some outstanding plants to suggest. My new favorite tomato, ‘Black Krim’, is from the Crimea. It has medium-sized dark fruit with meaty, luscious deep red flesh and a flavor with hints of salt, smoke, and wine. ‘Orange fantasia’ chard is such a beautiful leafy plant I recommend planting it with flowering annuals, This year it was paired with the lime green flowers of Nicotiana langsdorfii, a combination I will repeat. Two tender bulbs that I grew in pots were stunning additions to the garden. In a small pot one bulb of Scadoxus multiflorus sent up a flower stem in July which opened to produce a scarlet, gold-tipped floral fireworks. In another pot I planted ten bulbs of Bessera elegans which produced floppy foliage until September when hanging lantern blooms appeared with coral red petals with creamy white undersides and dangling stamens. This Mexican plant has continued to bloom for over two months.
Getting back to November, my bulbs are in the ground waiting for spring (some are in pots in the basement for a taste of spring in winter), rows of garlic cloves are tucked into the cold earth, and I have made it through November many times. Hopefully, many more.
“This is November of the hardest kind, bare frozen ground with pale brown or straw-colored herbage, a strong, cold, cutting north wind...but then I am often unexpectantly compensated, and the thinnest yellow light of November is more warming and exhilarating than any wine they tell of.” Henry David Thoreau
“It’s not always going to be this gray.
All things must pass.
All things must pass away.” George Harrison
November 2020