October's roses gave a big blast of fall color

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It's been interesting to admire the advancing fall colors while roses have been in such admirable display. Large, well-formed rose blossoms have been everywhere — and pretty much unspoiled by rain — until this week's storms. The reason for the late display is two-fold: hot September temperatures and a warm October with reasonable evening temperatures.

The 100-degree heat wave last month delayed growth and blossoming for many flowering plants. So instead of the typical burst of blooms in September, we had a delay. Then the balmy October granted us an extension, which the roses used to our advantage.

I'm certainly not complaining about the roses coming so late. It's been an interesting anomaly, which got me thinking about other plants that do unexpected things. Take for instance, the larch.

One expects all needle-bearing trees to maintain their foliage all year. But the larch (Larix laricina) is an exception. In the fall it turns a golden yellow and drops all its needles. In mid-spring the leaves return, a light, bright blue-green that darkens toward the colors we are accustomed to assigning to evergreens. Another unusual aspect of the larch is the softness of the needles, nothing like its typically stiff evergreen counterparts. The eastern larch is an ornamental choice. The western larch is much taller.

Any plant that flowers in mid-winter is an anomaly in my book, and witch hazel (Hamamelis vernalis) starts blooming in February. The flowers are small, but so vivid in some cultivars that you are seduced into getting a closer look. This plant has medicinal uses, and has been bred to create more exotic flowering forms. It likes a wet habitat, so it's a good streamside choice. It's a forest tree, so it would be best planted in shade.

Harry Lauder's Walking Stick (Corylus avellana "Contorta") produces the most amazing catkins in late winter. Harry must have been the crooked man of the old nursery rhyme, because the branches of the shrub take off in surprising directions, as the name "Contorta" implies.

They are attractive in every season, but winter and early spring are its show-off times. I've seen these planted in full sun in our area.

Speaking of sun, it seems to be behind the clouds. The winter rains are the green light for planting spring-flowering bulbs. The reason to wait until the rains is so they'll cool soil temperatures sufficiently to stave off sprouting. Once, back in my early gardening days, I planted tulips much too soon. Because it was a long, warm autumn, before long they were poking up their heads in the wrong season. That was certainly unexpected. Nor was it very healthy for those tulips; they had no time to recharge and set another blossom for spring.

It's fine to plant bulbs through about Dec. 15. When you plant, mix fertilizer into the dirt under the bulb, place the bulb in and add the soil back on. Don't pack it in, and if you can use one of those bulb planters, your soil will be better off. The fertilizer is not for next spring's flowers, which are already in the bulbs in an embryonic state. It is for the following year's blooms. A good time to fertilize established bulbs is in the spring, just after the plants bloom. The roots and leaves take in nourishment and set the flower at that time. That's why leaves need to stay put until they are yellow.

The yellow leaves that are on most people's minds this week are the ones they'll be raking. Leaf pickup, for those of us lucky enough to have it, starts next month and runs through December. My last piece of advice for today: Don't let leaves lie on your lawn, unless you are trying to kill it. But that's an anomaly topic for another day.

Master gardener Althea Godfrey is gardening editor for HomeLife magazine. Reach her at writealthea@charter.net.

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