September is when I evaluate my gardens and how well I have tended them. I am embracing a new season of my life now that Kent has retired and we are grandparents to three. Addy and Alex are old enough to come from Arizona for extended visits without their parents and one-year-old Wyatt is just around the corner. Gone are the days I would be outside all day until dark – planting, pruning, weeding and wondering what I would plant next.
My flower beds now include herbs and vegetables. It’s easy to squeeze parsley in next to the snapdragons. I place my pot of rosemary under the crabapple to vacation there until fall when it is brought in to spend the winter on a sunny windowsill. I no longer dream of an herb garden. I stick them in where there’s room or pot them up to place on top of the space where I just pulled a thistle.
September is a good time to plant lettuce since it prefers cooler weather. Just look for a space and put in a plant or sprinkle some seeds.
Some herbs are perennial and a joy to see grow bigger and better every year. I have an ordinary garden sage (salvia officinalis, Herb of the Year 2001) in my butterfly triangle and it is a delight. It has fuzzy greenish-gray leaves similar to lamb’s ear, but doesn’t spread like lamb’s ear. Because of the fuzzy texture, rabbits leave it alone and it offers the eye a resting place in the flowerbed packed with color and activity as the bees, butterflies and hummingbirds flit from bloom to bloom.
I have learned from the Naperville Garden Club that it is important to have spaces of calm within the garden. It might be a rock, a birdbath or a plant that is simply lovely in a quiet sort of way — like my sage.
The Naperville Garden Club invites you to join us at our meetings and we welcome new members at any time. Check out our website for details as well as the Positively Naperville “events” page.
