Fall Manifestation

Mimi and I had two days at home last weekend. We were ready to fall garden with a plan and tools out when we got up so we could take advantage of that little cool snap we had. We set the tent up in the backyard on the levee. The nights that we yard camped, we sat out on the patio near the pond, chatted, and ate our dinner. When it got late enough, we got in the tent to watch the full moon rise above us. The top of our new tent is screen mesh, so we could enjoy the bright night sky. As it began to get dewy, we put the rain fly on and slept so well.

We are in between yurts right now, so we had to whip out the tent. During the months that it is cool enough to sleep outside, we sleep in our yurt. We take it down during the between months to protect its white cotton canvas cover. One will last three years before it begins to pick up mold and other airborne particulates that degrade the liner. We were on our third year with this one, so we have a brand-new yurt still in the box in the garage.

We’ll wait until the temperatures stabilize in the 50s at night before putting up the new one. That’s the best sleeping weather, and anything below that works until it dips under 32 degrees. We don’t get many nights below 32 during the winter, so we stay out there for about three months solid. We have a Big Buddy heater hooked up to a propane tank that keeps it toasty. It takes about 10 minutes to get down to shorts-and-t-shirt warm on a 35-degree night.

Mimi has decorated the inside of the yurt Bohemian style with a king-size bed on jute carpets, prayer flags, two coffee-sipping chairs, and a little stove and table for making pour-over coffee—a major part of camping for us. We have rechargeable lamps on our bedside table. It seems like more and more things are available with rechargeable batteries that make nights like this fun. Our phones are on rechargeable blocks, as are our music source, headlamps, and yurt lights, which can be charged with solar chargers. Even the golf cart we take down there runs on lithium batteries.

It’s nice on the nights we go down there, with the trees and paths leading to the spot illuminated. We started getting nutty with our lights a few years ago when I asked the lighting guy who initially installed our system a simple question: how many lights can I add to the existing system? He said that since the lights are such a low load, I could keep adding until it shut the system down. That was all I needed to hear. I test its boundaries pretty frequently, and so far, all is well.

Sometimes I’ll come home with a big spool of lighting wire, start at the farthest light, and head out into the dark woods. I’ll hook up two or three more lights in a daisy chain whenever I find some good trees. Going so far into what would otherwise be total darkness to light a few interesting trees brings so much depth to our yard.

Right now, Mimi and I are creating a path through our timber bamboo. I’ve lit the path with four more lights, so now we can see the gorgeous canopy of bamboo poles from the house. I can barely see the front of the barn through the trees since adding lights out there.

On yurt nights we normally go for a yard walk while the lights redirect our vision away from everything that needs doing and toward the trees and their reflections on the pond. I enjoy those walks more than anything, since the night sky hides the work part of the garden and allows us to relax, pat ourselves on the back, and dream about what’s to come.

When we are finished walking, we look back at the yurt glowing from within—it’s so beautiful. Its warm and inviting appearance draws us back to it and its cozy covers. When we yurt on the weekends, we’re set up to enjoy a slow morning with coffee and something to read. On school-night yurts, we usually head to the house for coffee at our normal stations so we can get on to Garden Works and do our thing.

Our new practice is to hot tub with Epsom salt to relax sore muscles, then follow with a good yoga session on the patio before lights out. Once yurting season returns, we’ll head to the yurt instead of the house. It’s nice to keep our evenings interesting and away from whatever is happening on the TV. That stuff drives me nuts and gets me down—I’d rather pass my time in the real world.

We are in the traditionally driest part of the year, and it seems to be holding true this fall as well. We love our irrigation system for getting us through until our plants can be watered correctly. Most of my 22 zones are set for 30 minutes. That sounds like a lot—11 hours if I run it all in one day—but the water from a 30-minute run doesn’t penetrate the ground 1/8 of an inch. It’s usually not enough to even get through the mulch. That’s why I say the system just gets us through until the plants can get what they need.

Weeks of no rain seem to be coming our way, so I’ll stay consistent with my watering and really soak when time allows. Once we get past this dry spell, we can relax and let Mother Nature hold the hose for about six months. I’ll be looking forward to passing the torch back to her sometime in November.

Mimi and I will be headed down to New Orleans this weekend for a big ole blowout with the Martinson crew to celebrate my mother’s birthday. That short three-hour drive makes a big difference in where you were and where you are. First of all, New Orleans feels like another planet compared to my hometown. The change in plant zones is huge. Around Hammond, LA the plant life begins to feel different. They’re able to grow plants year-round that we just barely can’t pull off.

New Orleans has several really nice nurseries. We’ve seen some of them, and we’ll try to slip in another one after the festivities wind down on Sunday. I keep hearing about a place called Urban Roots. They apparently have both a nursery and a petting zoo. I hear the staff is very knowledgeable about plants and the selection is eclectic. If we can fit it in, we will.

We’ve been to Perino’s several times, and their plant selection always makes me jealous. It’s such a smoothly run nursery serving most of New Orleans, so you can imagine the inventory it takes to operate a place like that—it’s mind-blowing.

This week, I believe on Wednesday, our first 18-wheeler load of pumpkins and “what not” will arrive in our parking lot. We have all the regular jack-o-lanterns coming, but the fun stuff is on this truck as well—the white pumpkins, stackables, Cinderella, Fairytale, and Turk’s Turbans. We’ll have bins of winged gourds, mini-boos, corn stalks, and hay bales for fall decorating.

We’ll spend the end of next week getting the load displayed in a way that will inspire those who come to see. The timing is perfect: the mums are cracking a little color, the pansies are getting planted, the fall veggies are in, and Mimi has a fresh giant truckload of houseplants with crotons and ferns. Ben is filling up the shrubs and trees area. We have several trucks on the way over the next few weeks, and hopefully we’ll have what you need for some fall and winter gardening.

Andrew has the aquatic plant area looking fresh and has propagated a new crop of plants for fall water gardening. I hear we also have two more containers of pottery coming in from Vietnam in the next couple of weeks. I’m not sure how all this gets done, but somehow we’ll be ready.

It feels like we’re heating up as normal this month, but by bringing in the fall goodies we hope to manifest the cool winds to start blowing in our direction. We’ll be doing the cool-off dance, and you’re welcome to join us—the more the merrier. You can do the hope-and-pray dance at your own oasis by digging in as if it’s fall, or come join us so we can get you into the spirit of the season. Either way, it’s close, and we’re excited for the change.

I’m off to the Big Easy!