Bringing the Garden Inside

[By Marcia Milner-Brage, in Cedar Falls, Iowa, USA]

In autumn, the change of the season is always a shock, a poignant time, here in the Upper Midwest. In the first days of November, even with the waning light, tuberous begonias were at their peak in outside window boxes; my kitchen garden was still supplying peppers and fresh herbs; annuals and perennials were still offering brilliant color.  And then the inevitable: a cold, prairie wind brought the hard frost and blew down the leaves. And everything that required warmth died. The world outside went from vibrant color to a muted palette.

Here, the backyard garden as seen from my studio window. Where flowers bloomed from early spring through the end of October, now a mat of dried leaves.

At 4AM the night of the hard frost, I jolted awake, remembering my peppers out there in the cold! In darkness, with a coat over my nightclothes, I harvested this bowlful with the help of my headlamp.

Rutabaga & Peppers

My husband had heeded the frost warning more gracefully than I and had already dug up the aloe from the patio planters and the rosemary shrub from the kitchen garden.  And as he does every year, he brought them inside to live in the basement under grow lights for the duration of the winter.

Bringing the garden inside is a ritual of living in a cold climate.  For my friend Marie, who has a backyard vegetable garden a few blocks from my house, her fall ritual involves harvesting and canning vegetables. See her squash harvest here. And her basement pantry of canned goods here. My fall garden rituals are less ambitious—collecting seeds and digging up delicate flower bulbs. But, just the same, they help me to live through the cold season and believe that spring will come again.

Call me nostalgic, but to squeeze just a bit more from the garden before the freeze. I cut some window box begonias and brought them inside.  Outside: the leafless, practically colorless shrub through my kitchen window. It’s starting to look a lot like winter.