“In-A-Gaddda-Da-Vida, baby” — Doug Ingle
It’s the beginning of the botanical grande finale, a spectacle to help us forget that we are close to the end of this year’s gardening season. As summer transitions to autumn the natural world becomes achingly beautiful; the trees ablaze and blossoms vivid. I have lingered many hours with a book, with a cup of coffee, with a glass of wine, with wonderment, by my garden as butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds fed on nectar. I have been sitting in the shade of a golden-needled Metasequoia in an iconic butterfly chair given to me almost thirty years ago by Elsa Bakalar whose garden I had the pleasure to work in. I had noticed the chair frame rusting in the woods; she gave it to me and it joins all the plants and knowledge that I also acquired from her. Elsa wintered in Ashfield in her later years but her heart was in the highlands of Heath.
The New England asters, Symphyotricum novae-angliae, in my garden are from that garden in Heath. The deep purple or pink blooms with golden centers on tall stems are visited by monarch butterflies, bees, and hummingbirds only a few feet from where I sit. A shorter aster, S.laevis ‘Bluebird’, adds another shade of blue to the garden palette. The tender salvias that I collect flower profusely towards the end of the season. The blue wands of Salvia ‘Indigo Spires’ are held on five foot stalks while deep blue blooms with black calyces abound on bushier plants of S. ‘Amistad’ and S ‘Blue Suede Shoes’. S. ‘Silke’s Dream’ has an airy habit with flowers of a salmon-red-pink color that is stunning. The bees crawl into the salvia blooms and hummingbirds hover and dip their beaks in. Another intense purple is produced by Vernonia, the New York iron weed. I have the native Vernonia noveboracensis, which reaches eight feet, growing in my lower garden. In the smaller garden I planted V.lettermanii ‘Iron Butterfly’, a much shorter variety which is native to Arkansas. Ironweed is a magnet for butterflies and bees. Cimicifuga racemosa ‘Hillside Black Beauty’ has dark foliage and tall black slender stems topped with creamy white bottle brush flowers which are sweetly fragrant and become abuzz with busy bees. The small wild asters at the edges of the woods, along stone walls, and sneaking into the garden provide a provide a frothy thread throughout the autumn landscape with dainty flowers of white or pale blue and endearing names of calico, crooked stem, aromatic, and big leaf.
“We are like butterflies who flutter for a day and think it is forever.” — Carl Sagan
I’ve been sitting in the butterfly chair, enjoying the clouds of fluttering butterflies who were feasting on an ironweed cultivar called ‘Iron Butterfly’. The monarchs are an imperiled wonder of nature that are a joy to see flourishing in my garden. The chair was a designed in 1938 and became extremely popular by the 1960s. Iron Butterfly was the name of a rock group whose hit from 1968, ‘In-A-Gadda -Da-Vida’, was a drunken misinterpretation of the original title, ‘In the Garden of Eden’. It all feels quite fitting.
“We cherish things…precisely because they cannot last; it’s their frailty that adds sweetness to their beauty.”—Pico Iyer
By the time of the autumnal equinox the hummingbirds have flown south and most of the monarch butterflies as well. The late flowers will continue their show and the bees will be active on warmer days. The hours of daylight decrease; the morning and evening light shines in at a lower and lower angle dramatically illuminating the remaining blossoms. It is one of the most splendiferous times of year in the garden. I’ll still sit in my chair, bundled against the season’s chill. I’ll miss the aerial antics of the butterflies and hummingbirds, but they will be back next year. As will it all. Another gardening year draws to a close. In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida indeed. In my little garden of Eden.
“Tonight the crimson children are playing in the west, and tomorrow will be colder.”—Emily Dickinson
October, 2021
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