And so autumn is upon us. Cool nights mixed with dry and sunny days makes for distinctive autumn colors and this yr we’ve got had an absolute explosion of colors! The intenseness takes my breath away no matter climate. Throughout sunny days I run out to take photos, and throughout the grey cloudy ones I stroll by means of the forests looking mushrooms and delighting within the surroundings. It solely lasts a brief few weeks, this depth, earlier than the leaves drop to the bottom and the branches turn out to be naked. Greatest get pleasure from it whereas it lasts, I say to myself, and spend as a lot time as doable bathing in natures glory.
Many of the timber I’ve planted in my woodland backyard are chosen with autumn colors in thoughts. It’s a difficult factor to steadiness all of the totally different facets of the seasons when selecting timber and shrubs. Spirea Japonica Odensala is a favorite shrub of mine, with a plethora of pink summer season flowers, after which there are fairly a couple of flowering cherries together with American native fowl cherry (Prunus pensylvanica), Sargents cherry (Prunus sargentii) and the Japanese cherry (Prunus Accolade) which have pretty spring flowers in addition to shiny autumn leaves. Nonetheless, there’s one favorite small tree I’ve in my gardens that’s solely there for they pleasure it offers me in autumn – the Katsura (Cercidiphyllum japonicum) pictured within the first image of this publish. It not solely has beautiful autumn colors but in addition an ever so gentle however totally scrumptious caramel odor in autumn when the leaves are falling.
Nonetheless, for all my plantings, in my gardens a lot of the autumn color comes from native timber. Birches, oaks, apen (Populus tremula) and European fowl cherry (Prunus padus) surrounds the gardens as all of them like the sunshine that reaches them after they needn’t compete with pines, as they must in the midst of the forests. Native timber are so necessary in gardens, as they’ve a pure compatibility with the soil and local weather and sometimes fare higher than imported varieties. They not solely present construction and kind with out most of the issues non-natives have, but in addition they’re tremendously necessary as a result of they feed the native wildlife. Bugs and birds are tailored to seek out diet from the native vegetation, and letting natives into your backyard will present a pure habitat that no imported plant will give. My European fowl cherry for instance feeds at least 75 totally different species of bugs that dwell off its leaves, flowers and buds, in addition to an added 200 species that dwell off the timber’ decaying wooden and bark. In comparison with that, my lovely Katsura is a veritable desert feeding just a few bugs with its fallen leaves on the bottom. Makes you suppose, would not it…?
In the meantime, the times are getting noticeably shorter and the shadows are getting longer by now. After autumn equinox the solar sits decrease within the sky, and within the afternoon I actually discover the motion of the shadows. The clouds transfer sooner too, with a transparent sky turning overcast in simply an hour or so. A sunny morning will flip right into a moist afternoon, and sometimes a day may have each rain and sunshine in it. I like this variability in a method. It gently eases nature into the chilly and darkish season, and me too.
