A few weeks ago, with the help of my mum (who happened to be in town) I planted my first-ever batch of bulbs. It’s one of those things that I’ve always wanted to do, but  until now I never got around to doing it. Gardening blogs and Twitter feeds are all a-buzz about bulb planting season, so I had plenty of reminders that now was the time! I was also inspired by the Doonesbury comic strip — gardening that makes me laugh is gardening that I can get behind.

We started small, which (I am told) is not the best way to start with bulbs — but I often learn best by failing, and I decided that 35 bulbs was enough. I bought two kinds of crocuses, some wee daffodils, and some Fritillaria meleagris, which I love because they look like tiny checkerboards.

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The summer between by junior and senior year of college, I worked at my old high school in the school garden. One of the perks (really!) of the job was being introduced to Colorado potato beetles, which I took particular pleasure in destroying. It is my firm belief that Colorado potato beetle larva are the grossest pests on the face of the earth. They’re so — orange and shiny and revolting. I am not a violent person, but a plant full of Colorado potato beetle larva awoke in me the urge to destroy.

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Fall is a contradictory season. On the one hand, leaves are dying off and falling, the summer sunshine and warmth are retreating, daylight hours are dwindling. My neighbors’ yards do not look particularly handsome these days; rather, they have a droopy and soggy quality about them, and most of the colorful blooms have gone away. But on the other hand, it seems that the world has never felt so beautiful. The air is sharp and fresh, and the rain has rarely smelled so comforting.

I’m realizing that autumn brings with it a paradigm shift from “individual” to “corporate” beauty. Color is found not in what we tend delicately with our hands, but in larger, wilder things: trees, wind, furious flurries of dead leaves, sunsets, and paint-by-number hillsides rising behind the city. My neighborhood as a whole screams, “Fall is here,” as it is collectively covered in a frosting of orange and yellow and red. The season is like a Monet painting: we have to let go and step back to see how all the small pieces of apparent chaos are actually vibrant paint smears on the glorious canvas of fall.

On a personal level, this season seems to be mirroring my life in a state of transition. I’ve just completed the process of moving from one side of the Willamette River to the other. Last week, boxes were scattered across the house, countless amounts of telephone calls were made to utility companies, maintenance people, rental agents, and house painters.  But in spite of all the bedlam, that transition carried with it a wonderful promise of things to come. Now, as my life is settling down slightly, nothing seems more perfect than curling up in our rocking chair on our new front porch with a mug of hot apple cider, watching the season complete its own untidy shift into a new phase of life.

And who doesn’t love hot chocolate or spiced apple cider? Finding an orange leaf that somehow managed to sneak into the hood of my coat? Or the sight of cats lounging on top of cars, absorbing the last remnants of engine heat.

The transition from one way of life to another, however fleeting it might be, deserves a round of applause. Congratulations, world! You’ve done it again!  And this time, more beautifully than ever.

There is a tree planted in our parking strip which I love. It it particularly amazing in the fall, when it turns almost bright enough to light our entire house. I exaggerate — but is is truly one of my all-time favorite deciduous trees.

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The San Francisco Chronicle featured a great article on John Greenlee and The American Meadow Garden today.

John Greenlee has targeted the Great American Lawn — that notorious sink of fossil fuels, water, chemicals, and spare time — for destruction. “The revolution is clearly on,” he says, adding: “It’s a one-garden-at-a-time revolution.” With his manifesto The American Meadow Garden, sumptuously illustrated by Novato photographer Saxon Holt and published this month by Timber Press, Greenlee is hoping to reach lawn owners ready to change.

You can read the full article here.

I usually check Garden Rant when I get back into the office after a weekend. (You have to keep tabs on what those ranting folks are up to – if you don’t you might miss the latest gardening dust-up.)

Scrolling down the page a bit, I saw the post on sculpture in the North Carolina Botanical Garden. I’ve been thinking about art in the garden a lot lately, partly as a result of trying to niceify my own back yard. I currently have very little to show in the “garden art” department. There’s my ceramic fish plaque, which hangs over my composting bins and which makes an excellent Patron Saint of Stuff Rotting.

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The Wall Street Journal ran an enlightening story recently about “turf wars” over water guzzling landscapes and what the EPA hopes to do about it.

The article outlines various municipal programs (incentive-based as well as voluntary) currently in place (primarily in the west) to encourage homeowners to “tear up” their turf lawns in favor of a more sustainable landscape, requiring much less water, fertilizer, and fewer pesticides. They are offering up to $1.50 per square foot of turf grass if you replace that same area with regionally-appropriate, drought-tolerant plants. It’s a neat idea, this “cash for grass.” Makes sense. People will be financially rewarded for ripping up their water-guzzling, synthetic-chemical-sucking lawns and planting better choices for their neighborhood and region.

But, what kinds of plants — besides the obvious cacti and succulents — don’t require much watering or fertilizer, you might ask? Lots of them, actually.

Enter the “new” American landscape: the meadow garden.

A meadow garden, or prairie-style planting, is a shimmering mini eco-system, in which regionally-appropriate grasses combine with colorful perennials to form a rich tapestry that is friendly to wildlife. This type of garden is not only good for the natural environment, virtually maintenance free, and needs far less watering than a turf lawn, but best of all—it requires no mowing, ever! Wow, can you even imagine?

As you can see, we’re not talking not boring, monotonous-looking, either. These are visually stunning, colorful,vibrant, bold, textured, flowering plants, with four-season interest. Bonus — they attract wildlife and are a huge benefit to the natural ecosystem.

It’s fortuitous timing that Timber Press’s new book, The American Meadow Garden: Creating a Natural Alternative to the Traditional Lawn by John Greenlee with photos by Saxon Holt, has just been released this month. It can help homeowners who are choosing to tear up their lawn this fall find the right mix of perennials and regionally appropriate grasses and grass-like plants to suit their local landscapes.

Author John Greenlee has been designing meadow gardens for decades. Dubbed “The Grassman” by The New Yorker, Greenlee (who also happens to be sought-after garden designer to a number of well-known Hollywood celebrities) is just the authority to help navigate and inspire folks to install a meadow garden at home.

And, if you’re interested in more information, check out the new Lawn Reform Coalition website, a newly-formed group of activists and plant nuts who, like John Greenlee, want to help educate others about “killing the lawn.” They’ve banded together in the hopes of creating a national revolution on the topic.

It’s time to get rid of the old-fashioned lawn and embrace a sane and healthy future: the designed meadow.

Last week I traveled to the Bay Area to attend the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association’s annual regional show.

This year it took place in Oakland. And surprise, surprise — I loved it! (It’s a well known fact around the office that I adore traveling for work. I don’t know why, but I really do). In fact, I fell in love with the entire area. I rode the BART, walked around downtown Berkeley, went shopping on College Avenue, had hot chocolate in San Francisco, and…

But, back to the show. Each regional area has a related association of independent booksellers—there is PNBA in the Pacific Northwest, SIBA in the south, NEIBA in New England, etc. Each associations hosts an annual Fall trade show. It’s a chance for publishers, bookstores, authors, distributors, and the rest of the people involved in publishing to come together to learn about — and hopefully sell — new Fall titles. I was there to help our regional sales reps — the inimitable Craig McCroskey and John Majeska of Book Travelers West.

So what did I actually do? I talked to booksellers, explained our new titles, searched out new event venues, and grabbed the catalogs of several other publishers. I also had the chance to host a dinner at Oliveto, an amazing restaurant in the Rockridge section of Oakland. I enjoyed pasta, wine, and great conversation with Saxon Holt, the photographer of The American Meadow Garden, Keeyla Meadows, the author of Fearless Color Gardens, Stephanie Deignan, the events coordinator at Copperfield’s Books, Ann Leyhe, the owner of Mrs. Dalloway’s, and Margot Sheffner, the book buyer for Flora Grubb Gardens and advertising manager for Pacific Horticulture.

A pretty incredible mix of people.

Each year there are questions about the viability and role of the regional shows. Fewer orders are placed each year and many publishers wonder if they are necessary. I don’t know if the shows as they are now are a good model, but I do know the very real value of the face-to-face time with booksellers and authors. No amount of email, promotions, or publicity can replace regular old human interaction.

And, if they canceled the regional shows, how could I convince Timber Press to send me to the south next year?

P.S. If you live in Berkeley or are just visiting, go to Mrs. Dalloway’s. I’ve never seen a bookstore with such an amazing selection of gardening books — they literally have a WALL dedicated to them (please ignore the awful photography).

The only appropriate thing to do after mourning the demise of summer is to get down to business on all those garden chores that I’ve been putting off for so long, and start thinking about fall.

I harvested and ripped out the last of my godzilla beans, which were menacing the leeks anyway. Here the vanquished monster trails some vines over the edge of my yard debris bucket.

I finally trimmed the edges of my raised beds,  finding lots of spiders, slugs, and a few pill bugs rolling for their lives. I left everyone alive except for the slugs. (It’s a preemptive strike in the ongoing “Slug Wars: A New Hope for a Slug-Free Garden.” Tune in next spring for “Slug Wars: The Empire Strikes Back.” ) Incidentally, my lettuces are adoring the cool weather.

I also decided that the dill seedheads were just too pretty to trim, and left them be. Maybe some birds will enjoy some fresh dill-y breath on their way to Acapulco.

After the maintenance was done, I took some pictures of the spectacular tree growing in front of my house. I think it is a beech, though the bark doesn’t look quite right. In any case, it is spectacular and amazing, and will only get more so from here until all its bright, bright leaves are blown away.

I’ve been having a little trouble fully embracing fall, which arrived all of a sudden at the end of September.  (So suddenly! One day it was sunny and warm and then BAM! Rain and cold!) I feel like there are so many more summer things that I want to do, but time marches on. The only solution is to buck up and get ready for fall – the colors, the pumpkins, the kids asking for candy, my husband eating all the candy and then making me answer the door … (“Here are some great carrots! Please don’t throw eggs at me!”)

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