November 17, 2011

Sedum–Rockport, MA

I remember the month of November when we lived in coastal Massachusetts. It was the turning month–the bridge from fall to winter. Leaves had to be raked early or they would adhere frozen to the grass until spring. While the tender vegetables were dispatched to the compost pile in October, in November carrots, parsnips and spinach would be settled into the cold frame with a blanket of salt marsh hay. The last of the asters and chrysanthemums stood as sentinels with Sedum ‘Autumn Joy’ and the sturdier ornamental grasses, all waiting to be slain by the first winter storm.

Recently, I reread a clipped column from Horticulture by Thomas C. Cooper. He captured for me the intermezzo that is November and prompted my own reflections on the month. 

November is a lingering month, both for the garden and the gardener. To the north and west the season has shifted to winter plain and simple, but here by the coast winter comes later and more gradually. The mornings are cold and frosty; afternoons close in early. But there are still many plants standing in the garden, and when the sun is out you think more of fall than of winter. I often wake up shivering and decide that today I will clean the garden for the year. Then the sun comes around the hill and up over the neighbor’s roofs and persuades me to hold off until a colder day. Besides, other jobs need doing before winter arrives at last and (so it seems) for good.  
–Horticulture, November 1991

Photo credits: Elizabeth Marro, (friend, Betsy to me). After reading my musings on November she sent me these images from her recent trip to New England. These photos capture an early storm and November.