The Most Wonderful Time of the Year

Usually a phrase used around a certain winter holiday – for me this is the most wonderful time of the year. Happy First Day of Autumn!

Asters are a welcome continuation of color into the fall months.

Today just happens to be an extra beautiful day in addition to the first day of fall. The sun is bright, there is a cool breeze and the temperature is hovering at comfortable.

Today I spent some time under my very favorite type of tree – the Katsura Tree (Cercidiphyllum japonicum). The tree here at the office is perfectly shaped thanks to our Master Gardener volunteers and currently sports a fragrance some describe as cotton candy, baking sugar cookies, vanilla pudding, or brown sugar. It is a sweet perfume that ignites the autumn air and for me, this is the smell of fall.

These green leaves do not give away their scented secret just by looking. You have to visit a Katsura in person, right as the colors are changing to earn the joy of this sweet scent.

It is not flowers that make this scent but the turning of the foliage, the chemical process by which these dainty heart-shaped leaves transition from true green to egg-yolk yellow, creates as a byproduct something I wish they would bottle and sell or make into candles.

A Reason for a Messy Fall Clean Up

Or the reason for a delayed spring clean up.

Often we are asked to clean up the messy fall debris in time for winter snow and to make sure spring blooms and new shoots have plenty of unobstructed room to grow. Today’s first day of spring snow gives us evidence as to why we should reconsider that trend.

A Robin, puffed up to keep warm, finds protection in the butterfly garden in Bucks County Extension Display Garden

Migrating birds taken by surprise at this snow and resident birds tired of fending off winter blasts and ducking clumps of snow falling from branches can and will take refuge in standing branches and stems not taken down in a fall clean up.