Chrysanthemums and Pumpkins

Yesterday I stopped at Kroger, the local supermarket.  The benches outside the store that held pots of impatiens only a few weeks ago were now groaning under the weight of huge pumpkins. Today my husband brought me the Lowe’s circular, and mums are on sale.  And need I remind you that the calendar page turned again today to September 1?

It’s fall, all right.

Okay, so we have – technically at least – a few more weeks until the ‘official’ start of fall. I for one am looking forward to cool weather, long hikes in the mountains, and football season.  Thank God for football season. It makes up for baseball season (sorry, all you baseball fans, but football is my thing).

Fall also brings chrysanthemums. I’ve only planted a handful here since deer love mums. It’s like deer candy. My friend Mary Alice once told me a funny story. She’d spent the afternoon planting yellow chrysanthemums along the walkway leading up to her kitchen door.  She went into the house and started cooking dinner. When she glanced out the window half an hour later…every single mum flower was gone!  She spotted a deer at the end of the line of flowers she’d just planted.  The deer had eaten off every single flower!

Yes, deer will do that. Still, I can’t resist chrysanthemums. When I was a little girl, my dad grew mums as part of the Long Island Chrysanthemum Society.  Each spring the box from Kings Nursery would arrive and he would painstakingly start each cutting, then transfer it into the special garden bed.  Next, my sister Ann would sew a shade cloth – a big black cloth – that fit over a wooden frame.  Dad would shade the mums or put the cloth on to exactly time the blooms. Closer to the fall show date, the shade cloth would come off and plastic sheets would replace the shade cloth to shelter the blossoms from wind and rain.  The Friday of the show he would get a big flat florist box from the Covert Avenue florist, and then he would snip each flower and pack it in tissue paper. We would drive with this gigantic box tied to the roof of the car to the show, which was held at Farmingdale College, in the big round auditorium.  Then the flowers would each get an old fashioned glass milk bottle filled with water and a green card with their information on it. I would help my dad carry the bottles out to the judging tables.  Flowers were judged against each other in special categories. My favorite category was the one in which big floral arrangements and tables were set with fine china as if expecting company. The horticultural students at the college would come in with crates of gorgeous china, silverware, and these enormous themed arrangements…and it was like a giant party was about to begin, and I was the only guest.

My dad won many trophies, which my mom had engraved.  One year my brother had a caricature drawn of my dad and there he was in the cartoon, holding a mum in one hand and a silver trophy in another.

Mums always remind me of fall, and my dad. No matter how hot it is outside, when the mums and pumpkins hit the store shelves, you know it’s fall!