"Every Leaf Speaks Bliss to Me"

Season 4, Episode 48, October 5, 2022

(Dee’s ‘Tiger Eye’ viola that Carol wants in her garden!)

Are you wondering where the title of this week’s episode came from? It’s a line from the Emily Brontë poem Dee read as one of our quotes this week. (Who’s impressed that I made that ë on the end of Brontë like that?)

Anyway, how does that one line of a poem relate to this week’s topics?

It relates only indirectly as we note that it is a bit of a shock to turn the calendar over to October and realize that the rest of the year will be spent in some form or fashion preparing and celebrating HalloweenThanksgivingChristmasNewYear which seem to all smash together in one big blur.

Which means fall in the garden will also probably go way too fast. In fact, Dee was just a little freaked out that there’s a possibility of frost in my garden this coming weekend.

That’s so nice of her to freak out for me. I’m quite calm about it all. It’s not that far off from my average first frost date.

We’ll report back next week on whether or not I actually see frost in my garden.

In the meantime, we advise taking each day as it comes and let the leaves speak bliss to you. Take long meanders (meanders? what am I? Victorian?) … take long walks through a garden, eyes looking up at the changing leaf colors, the bright blue skies of autumn…

Now, let’s move on to this week’s episode.

For our flower topic, we talked about how you might go about saving annuals or tropical plants over winter. I wrote two Family Handyman articles that may give you some hints: "Is coleus an annual or perennial?” and How to Grow and Care for Coleus.

Dee brought up “the geranium lady” as she called her, Robin Parer, owner of Geraniaceae, who knows more about pelargoniums than just about anyone. Dee also mentioned an article about her in American Gardener magazine but it’s for American Horticultural Society members only. If you’re a member, it’s in the January/February 2022 issue. If you aren’t a member, consider joining AHS so you’ll get the magazine. It’s quite good!

In the vegetable department, we talked about planting garlic because ‘tis the season. Dee is planting some garlic this fall after saying she wasn’t ever going to grow it again. Never say never.

In Dee’s honor the alternate title for this episode was going to be “There’s always room for never again in a garden” or something like that.

If you want to plant some garlic, you can get some from Botanical Interests (affiliate link). Hurry though, because they usually sell out.

By the way, it’s not easy to come up with vegetable garden topics all through winter. Leave us a comment if there is a particular topic you’d like us to cover, vegetable or otherwise.

I’m pretty excited that on the bookshelf this week, we have  The Halloween Hare by Carol J. Michel, illustrations by Ty J. Hayden. (Amazon Link). Yes, that’s by me! And my nephew did the illustrations. It’s my second children’s book, a companion, of sorts, to The Christmas Cottontail (Amazon Link). It’s publishing birthday is October 4!

If you’re interested, you can also check out the first blog post about the Halloween Hare that I wrote way back in 2008.

Dee found our dirt for this week, literally the morning we recorded this podcast episode. It’s a YouTube video of a Saturday Night Live skit about the Spotted Lantern Fly. Never in our wildest dreams did we think there would be a reason to link to an SNL skit, but there’s that word “never” again. Never say never.

And here’s some real info on Spotted Lantern Fly from Cornell University. It’s a bad bug. We should all be looking for it wherever we garden and killing it when we find it. And also reporting any sightings to our local cooperative extension service if we find it where it hasn’t been spotted before.

Dee went down a rabbit hole finding out more information about monarch butterflies via Monarch Joint Venture, which has a lot of webinars on monarchs. And I found an  article from Purdue about monarchs in Indiana… which includes another link to a long list of native plants to plant for nectar sources for monarchs and other pollinators. The native plant list is probably good for the entire mid-section of the country, not just Indiana.

By the way, if you haven’t read Dee’s blog post about monarchs, please do. It’s gone viral! So much good information. Then check out this video on Instagram about “becorns” and monarch butterflies. Super cute! (Super cute? I’ve gone from a meandering Victorian to a hip teenager in one newsletter.)

My rabbit hole was not as related to gardening as monarchs. It was the newly released cozy mystery, The Bullet That Missed by Richard Osman, the third book in the Thursday Murder Club series. (Amazon Link). The only mention of a garden in the book was when they were digging in a garden looking for a body. Of course! And I would like to thank the listener who recommended the cozy mystery, Deadhead and Buried (The English Cottage Garden Mysteries #1) by H.Y. Hanna (Amazon Link) which does have quite a bit of gardening in it (and a body found buried in a garden, of course.) It’s part of a series, which always gets me into trouble because I like closure so will want to read all of the books in the series, in order. (Remember the recent summer of Aunt Dimity?)

Speaking of closure, let’s wrap this up with all the usual stuff…

Affiliate link to Botanical Interest Seeds. (If you buy something from them after using this link, we earn a small commission at no cost to you. This helps us continue to bring this podcast to you ad-free!)  Book links are also affiliate links.

Email us anytime at TheGardenangelists@gmail.com. We try to respond promptly, unless we’re in our gardens, which is quite likely. 

For more info on Carol and her books, visit her website.  Visit her blog May Dreams Gardens.
For more info on Dee and her book, visit her website.  Visit her blog Red Dirt Ramblings.

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