Diary of My Country Life-September 26th, 2025

The original source of this blog: https://www.lotusandmichael.com/blogs/diary-of-my-country-life

09/26/2025 Friday 66-80F Cloudy

Autumn is half gone. The sun becomes less fierce at noon and the moon gets clearer. It’s the best season now, time to do something precious. The first sign for me to realize the arrival of real autumn are the ripening horse chestnuts hanging over the sidewalk of my house.

“Plop!” One ripe chestnut drops from a high branch onto the hard ground; its spiky shell is cracked open, and the shiny, dark brown chestnut jumps out. “Swoosh!” A vehicle roars past with a relatively light “pop”, I know that an unlucky chestnut was just smashed by the car.

Sometimes if I stay outdoors long enough, and if by chance it is a windy or rainy day, I can hear the continuous drops of the chestnuts----actually I quite enjoy this sound, it always reminds me of life living in mountains.

“The wild fruits are falling in the rain,

And the insects are chirping underneath my lamplight.”

Thirteen hundred years ago a Chinese poet Wang-Wei wrote this. And now I feel the same way. While I am soaking in my imaginary world, my husband comes to the porch, looking up at the loaded branches, signs: “A lot of chestnuts! We ought to clean up the sidewalk, so the pedestrians won’t fall.”

“Don’t worry! I will clean the street as well. Our plants will get a big feast.” I say to him.

That’s true. Even though these chestnuts are inedible to humans, they are still oily and full of nutrition. The more they drop on the ground, the more the vehicles crush them, or critters chew on them, the happier I am----I need the smashed ones for my flower beds as natural fertilizer.

This morning before the rain, I swept and collected five and half baskets of them, smashed ones and undamaged ones, and dumped them into the beds around my shrubs. It would be very time consuming if I sorted out the undamaged ones. So I decided to leave them alone and if some of them sprout next spring, I will just dig them out.

About two weeks ago, one morning when I woke up, I told my husband that I smelled the scent of osmanthus flowers. The season was still early for that flower, so my husband thought that I mistook the flowers of abelia and honey suckle which grew right under the window for osmanthus’. But how could I mix the classic fragrance of osmanthus with others? So I went to the yard, browsed all my three osmanthus plants, and found no flowers.  So, I must have been wrong.

Then one day I passed my front lawn, from there I happened to notice that familiar smell again. This time I checked a near osmanthus more carefully and did find a few clusters of gold tiny flowers hiding among the central leaves. So I wasn’t wrong; the scent I smelled two weeks ago was osmanthus’! They bloomed early this year.

I love osmanthus flowers. That’s why in my space-limited garden, I still planted three of them. The flowers have many uses----In China we brew them with green tea, especially the Dragon-well tea, which is almost as popular as jasmine tea; we knead them into dough or paste for baking; and this year I want to cook a dish called “Osmanthus Blossoms Braised Pork Belly”—I am not sure whether I am the first one to invent this dish or not, but I never saw or heard about it elsewhere. I just simply think the sweet and rich scent of osmanthus should go very well with braised pork belly’s sweetness and umami. I will cook this dish on Mid-Autumn Day, when my osmanthus plants bloom at their peak.

Other than osmanthus, my cyclamen has also bloomed. I planted it two years ago on the top of a sunny slope. I don’t think it liked being there as last fall it only showed one flower. Then I read online that cyclamen loved growing in a shadier, cooler place as it didn’t like hot sun. So this spring I transplanted it to the current spot, the north side of the house where it still can receive some morning and evening sunlight. It grew well. I could not only see the expanding of its leaves, but later on also many more flowers—now it has already formed a little patch to announce its territory. 

The shape of the cyclamen flower is very much like the ear of a rabbit. Perhaps that’s why Chinese people nickname it “Bunny’s Ear”.  Watching them trembling in breezes, their delicacy, fragility,  and sensitivity can really melt my heart.  But I know they don’t care whether my heart is melted or not; they just do their job, growing their roots.

These are all the joys, but there are also frustrations. To me, I like herbaceous peonies. They bloom impressive, large, fragrant flowers which are edible; and they are also hardy, both deer and groundhog resistant. Everything sounds pretty good but one: They are prone to powdery mildew, at least some cultivars are.

I planted seven cultivars of herbaceous peony in my garden, almost every one of them got mildew last fall----starting from end of May, I saw the signs of mildew. So, I made the milk, dish soap fungicide, and sprayed them every few days. The mildew was controlled, my plants didn’t look as unsightly as the first year, but it cost me a lot of effort.

This year the mildew came much later. I thought perhaps my peonies were strong enough to deter it, then in early September I started to see it on some of my plants. I made the same fungicide, sprayed them twice. However, it didn’t seem to be as effective as last year. 

So far based on what I observed in my garden, the scale of powdery mildew is much smaller on Itoh peonies, if there is any. And I haven’t found any mildew set one my tree peonies yet after two years.  But those are not as popular as herbaceous peonies in the market. If you buy bareroots, you may have to wait for two or three years or even more before you can see the first blossom. As always, good girls demand more patience to pursue 😂.