I’m not sure why I never thought about it before, but I realized the other day that autumn is our shortest season.  Not according to the calendar, but in the way we perceive it. When we think of fall, the thing that comes to mind is brilliantly colored foliage, like the burning bush in the photograph above. However, the time span when any individual tree or shrub is in its colorful glory is disgustingly short — often measured in mere days and almost never more than a couple of weeks.

For the serious leaf-peepers who make the pilgrimage to catch the best color in New England, the Appalachian hardwood forests, or the aspens in the Sierras there are websites that track the color change. The timing of the season depends on several factors, including recent rains and whether there’s been a frost. It’s hard to predict far in advance.

I am in Spokane and vicinity for a few days to catch what I hope will be the peak of color in gardens on the east side of the Cascades.  This afternoon I stopped at Finch Arboretum on my way into town and photographed a handful of specimen trees in the low sunlight. Golden rain tree, catalpa, honey locust, crab apples, and some of the maples were all putting on a fine show.

Tomorrow is predicted to be cloudy and possibly rainy, which will give a very different feel to the gardens I plan to visit and photograph. I actually hope there is a little light rain, but no wind, to accentuate the colors.

This morning I visited the incredible garden of Aaron Baker and Michael McMahill in Oklahoma City as part of the Garden Writers Association annual symposium tours.  What a pleasant surprise upon exiting our tour bus to encounter this delightful small garden in the middle of the continent. Everywhere we looked there were tasteful touches of whimsey, appropriate integration of art and humor, good choices of plants, and an abiding good taste. Aaron and Michael were gracious hosts as busloads of garden writers trouped through their private back yard on an otherwise quiet Sunday morning.

Touring gardens with hundreds of other garden communicators presents special challenges to the photographer.  Particularly, how to keep parts of bodies out of the frame and staying out of the way of other photographers in the group. Inevitably some degree of compromise (and a lot of patience) is required. Some photographers give up and don’t bother, but I find that the level of excitement and enthusiasm from working at a “speed photography” pace can pay off with some nice images.

The vignette in the photo above is just a tiny bit of the garden. Here a collection of containers with tropical-look foliage frames a pair of chaise lounges.  Just out of sight to the left was a bubbling hot tub sunken into the deck and behind that a covered outdoor dining room. In the front yard the couple had placed several unusual gourds and pumpkins among succulents and other foliage plants to begin to give an autumn feel to the garden. The garden was a wonderful example of what creative people can accomplish in a small space and without extravagant sums of cash.

I’ve spent the day photographing in four Kelowna, BC gardens. It’s definitely a transition time — not quite autumn but yet it doesn’t look like summer any more. The weather played a role, but more significant is what’s happening with the plants. Foliage is just beginning to turn in a few places, but Kelowna is still probably a couple of weeks away from the best color in the trees and shrubs.

These grasses were photographed late this morning at Elysium Gardens on the south side of Kelowna. In the foreground is Calimagrostis acutiflora ‘Karl Foerster’ and on the right is Miscanthus sinensis ‘Purpurascens.’ The gardens at Elysium had several other grasses artfully placed and generally towering over other foliage in the perennial beds. With sunlight alternating with clouds the grasses made a striking sight.

Several Hydrangea paniculata were showing a nice pink in their aging flowers, contrasting with variegated summer phlox and ‘Diablo’ Ninebark. Joe Pye Weed rose above Goldenrod that was just finishing blooming and Frikart’s Asters were scattered about with their large pale purple blossoms.

You only have another week to catch the display at Elysium, as it closes for the season at the end of September. If you haven’t visited, you should make plans to, whether next week or next season.

The other gardens I photographed today were also repeat visits from the summer. Rob Bruce, who had glorious roses in June, had a more subdued garden today. The unique plant was an annual vine in the pea family with large purple pods, but Rob couldn’t recall the name of it this morning. Nick and Teresa Manduca had a very nice clump of Autumn Crocus in the rock wall along the path in their side yard and an Autumn Clematis in full bloom along the yew hedge by the driveway. John Noble’s collection of Japanese Maples haven’t started to turn yet so the garden was quite subdued, particularly as it started to rain while I was working.

We’re still a few days away from the official start of Autumn (September 23 this year), but it sure doesn’t feel like summer any more.  I was out in a garden near Ferndale a couple of days ago and it doesn’t quite look like autumn yet, either.  Late summer flowers were still blooming and grasses were beginning to flower. The weather was definitely fall-like — overcast, spitting rain, and windy. Our night-time low last night was about 40° F.

I head up to Kelowna, BC tomorrow to revisit several of the gardens I photographed in early May and mid-June. Some of the gardeners have said it is too early while others say their gardens are looking good. Catching the peak of autumn is a challenge and there are many places I’d like to catch that peak.  Hopefully I’ll be in at least one of them at the right time.

I’ll be putting a new lens to the test on this trip.  I just received the Canon 24-105mm f/4 L, which is reportedly a little contrastier and sharper than the 28-135mm I’ve been using for several years.  I made a few test shots in our garden today and they look good. I forgot to test for vignetting at the wide end, a problem I’ve been experiencing with the 28-135 when there’s sky in the corner of the frame.

Back in August I visited two families in central Oregon that grow incredible vegetable gardens. Jim and Ardyce Swift, in Terrebonne, extend their season with two greenhouses for winter vegetables. They showed me snapshots of tomatoes and strawberries ready to pick in the middle of winter. Of course, their propane bill for the greenhouse is more than for their house. Lance and Jennifer Barker grow most of the vegetables they eat in their Bear Valley garden at 5000 ft. elevation about 20 miles south of John Day. Officially, they have no frost-free months. Lance is the primary gardener and over the years he’s learned which varieties work and numerous techniques for extending the season.

When I got home I was motivated to put some effort into growing fall and winter vegetables in our own garden. Bellingham has a pretty easy climate for fall crops, but it’s important to get them in the ground soon enough. Fall gardening doesn’t mean planting in the fall, but harvesting then. Planting seeds in mid-summer means the soil is nice and warm so they germinate quickly as long as you keep the soil moist. That means daily watering since we don’t get rain in the summer. I had to break my deep-seated prejudice against watering every day, but I’d seen what it could do in lots of east-side gardens this year.

On August 12 I spaded, cultivated, and worked a couple of wheelbarrows full of organic matter into three of our vegetable beds. Then I planted ‘Garden Babies Butterhead’ Lettuce, ‘Bright Lights’ Rainbow Chard, ‘Romeo’ Round Baby Carrots (all from Renee’s Garden) in one bed. In another bed I planted ‘Tyee Hybrid’ Spinach and ‘Early Dividend Hybrid’ Broccoli (both from Territorial Seed Company). Along the garden fence I planted ‘Cascadia’ Snap Peas (Territorial) and ‘Heirloom Cutting Mix’ Lettuce (Renee’s).

It’s been a month, and we’re just about ready to start eating spinach, chard, and lettuce thinnings. Here’s part of the spinach patch:

A week later, on August 19 I prepared and planted another bed and worked a fall crop into holes in a summer bed. I put in patchs of ‘Winterbor Hybrid’ Kale, ‘Bull’s Blood’ Beets, ‘Altaglobe’ Radishes, and ‘Melissa Hybrid’ Cabbage (all from Territorial). They’re all going strong, too.

The organic matter I worked into the beds included partly-composted leaves and garden debris. My compost piles almost never get hot enough to kill all the weed seeds, so I’ve had to pull lots of little weeds from around my vegetables. It really doesn’t take long to pull them and gently cultivate the soil with my fingers when the weeds are tiny. The work provides a nice break from sitting in the office working on captioning photos. I also had to put down slug bait since new little vegetable plants are a slug delicacy.

Now that the plants are coming along, I’ve got new photo subjects as well. It’s rather nice to be able to grow my own subjects, and then when they’re big enough pick and eat them. Shooting in my garden forces me to look closely for the weeds and get them out of the way. I also select for the nicest-looking plants. They may taste the same with a few bug holes, but they don’t look as good. I get down close to ground level to photograph the new plants since I think they look better from the side than from straight down. Recently, I’ve been using my Canon 90mm TS-E tilt-shift lens to control the plane of focus, sometimes with an extension tube to get closer.

It’s September and we’re smack in the middle of our short tomato season. I’ll admit it, we’re tomato snobs. If a tomato doesn’t come out of our garden we don’t eat it. So for too many months of the year we go without fresh tomatoes. Then when they’re in season we pig out on them. When we have too many to eat fresh we freeze, can, or dry them to enjoy through the winter months. As frost threatens we’ll pick everything off the vines and either let them ripen on the counter or eat fried green tomatoes. Some years we can still be eating fresh garden tomatoes at Thanksgiving.

Bellingham can be a slightly challenging place to grow tomatoes because we don’t get a lot of summer heat. Our garden is situated in the triangle between two streets so the microclimate is slightly warmer than some other vegetable gardens in town. We grow our tomatoes from seed, starting them inside in the spring and then transplanting them out in May. We use wall-o-waters around them to get them going. This year we were a little slow getting them in the ground so we didn’t have any ripe tomatoes until after the first of August. We like to have them by the last week of July.

In any case, we’re now eating tomatoes as fast as we can to keep up with the bounty of our eight or ten plants. We grow ‘Sungold’ (pictured) and ‘Sweet Million’ cherry tomatoes along with ‘Siletz’, a good slicer, and ‘Oregon Spring’ which is tasty and a little firmer than ‘Siletz.’ We get all our seed from Territorial Seed.

The ‘Sungold’ cherry tomatoes are definitely one of our favorites. They’re very sweet, flavorful, and just the right size to pop the whole thing in your mouth at one time.

One of the advantages of the garden as photo studio is choosing which plants to grow, and being able to shoot conveniently whenever the conditions are just right. Sometimes I have to ask Natalie to hold off picking the produce until I’ve finished photography. These particular tomatoes were photographed about a week ago and are long gone. But there are more on the vines ready to be picked and enjoyed.