"April is the cruelest month, breeding lilacs out of the dead land, mixing memory and desire, stirring dull roots with spring rain." --T.S. Eliot, "The Waste Land"

“People from a planet without flowers would think we must be mad with joy the whole time to have such things about us.” --Iris Murdoch

Start thinking pecan pie.

The folks who make just about all the canned pumpkin in the world are reporting that this year's harvest was so poor that we're going to see the impact on our grocery shelves this holiday season.

Libby's says heavy rains during the 13-week harvest in Morton, Ill., -- pumpkin capital of the world -- frustrated efforts to collect all the pumpkins. That, on top of a poor growing season.

"Libby’s has been part of [the holiday pie] tradition for more than 80 years and we appreciate that honor," said vice president Paul Bakus. "That's why we wanted to alert bakers to the anticipated shortage.

"Our calculations indicated that we may deplete our inventory of canned Libby's pumpkin as we approach the Thanksgiving holiday."

There was a shortage of pumpkin in August and September, too, when Libby's typically relies on surpluses from the previous season. But 2008 wasn't much of a year, either, and home cooks started noticing the empty spots on grocery store shelves.

Libby's, as reported here on Garden Variety, seemed confident that the 2009 harvest, which was scheduled to roll into the stores by the end of September, would take up any slack. But the rainy fall made it impossible for the heavy trucks to get into the fields.

The longer the pumpkins sit in the field, the poorer the quality, said Libby's, and the company is considering simply plowing the remaining pumpkins into the fields to enrich the soil for 2010.

Meanwhile, Giant, Safeway and Wegman's in Maryland report enough canned pumpkin on hand to make it to next Thursday. Giant, in particular, anticipated the shortage and contracted for other brands.

Photo credit: AP (file photo 2008)

Friday, 8 to 10 p.m. "Ladies Night," Homestead Gardens, Davidsonville. Potted paperwhite giveaway.

Saturday, 10 a.m. - 4 p.m. "Poinsettia Tour," Homestead Gardens, Davidsonville. Take a free shuttle to Homestead Growers to see where the poinsettias are grown; 6 p.m., "Illumination Ceremony" with carols by The Annapolis Chorale.

Saturday, 10-10:30 a.m. "Meet the Critter," Irvine Nature Center, Owings Mills. No fee.

Saturday, 1-3 p.m. "Pumpkin Spice Candles," Irvine Nature Center, Owings Mills. Adults. $8 for members, $10 non-members. Make your own. All materials included.

Saturday, 1-3 p.m. "Box Turtle Art," Irvine Nature Center, Owings Mills. Ages 4-8. $10 members, $18 non-members. Make a box turtle art project. Stories and snacks.

Saturday, 1-4 p.m. "Jim Shore Collectibles Expert," Valley View Farms, Cockeysville.

Sunday, noon to 4 p.m., "Poinsettia Tour," Homestead Gardens, Davidsonville. Take a free shuttle to Homestead Growers and see where the poinsettias are grown.

Sunday, 10-10:45 a.m., "Nature story time," Irvine Nature Center, Owings Mills. All ages. No fee.

Monday, 10 a.m. - 12 p.m. "Native American Art Workshop," Irvine Nature Center, Owings Mills. 4 to 6 years old. $25 for members, $40 for non-members.

Tuesday - Dec. 31, 8 a.m. - 4:30 p.m. "Evergreens 101," National Arboretum, Washington. Learn firsthan which trees last the longest, smell the best and make decorating easiest. Free. No registration required.

Tuesday - Dec. 3, 7 p.m.- 9 p.m. "Full Moon Hikes," National Arboretum, Washington. Seasonal highlights and points of interest on this 4-mile, mildly strenuous hike. Held rain or shine. Ages 18 and older. $18 for members, $22 for non-members. Registration required.

Friday, 1-6 p.m. Book signing with Dr. Joe Wheeler, author of the "Christmas in My Heart" series. Valley View Farms, Cockeysville.

"The Best Plants Come with a Story." --Maria Rodale in Organic Gardening Magazine, June/July 2006

Baltimore Sun file photo

I found my neighbor Bob just outside my picket fence the other day, using his leaf blower in reverse - sucking up, and chopping up, the leaves my husband had swept into the street.

Next, he went into the leaf bags we'd put out for recycling and was sucking those dry, too.

Bob, as you might guess, is a big believer in composting and in using leaves as mulch in his gardens.

I agree. But things are a little tricky at my house.

My husband is kind enough to blow the leaves out of my many gardens and then run over them with his mulching lawn mower, bagging them as he goes.

I use a bag or two in my compost pile.

And then I put the rest right back on my gardens.

My dear husband is so tolerant of all my gardening, but I think this chore maddens him. It is pretty clear I am undoing what he has just done!

There is a school of thought that all leaves must be removed from the garden, to prevent disease and infestations. And of course, there is Bob's point of view: leaves are a gardener's gold.

(Susan Harris does a good job of sorting out these opinions on her Sustainable Gardening blog).

Me? I'm just trying to keep the peace in the house.

If you have been conscientious enough to install a rain barrel to collect the rain the pours off of your roof, now is the time to put it away for the winter.

That's the advice of Shawna Coronado, who blogs at GardeningNude. (Ok. Stop it.)

She recommends that you disconnect the rain barrel from the downspout and drain it. If it is possible, move it inside. If you can't do that, flip it over so water does not collect in the bottom and freeze because that will cause just about any rain barrel to crack. I know. Mine did.

It might also be necessary to get come flexible downspout tubing to direct rainwater away from your foundation or your garden or your deck - wherever you have located your rain barrel.

There is a great pleasure in working in the soil, apart from the ownership of it. The man who has planted a garden feels that he has done something for the good of the world. --  author unknown

Beautiful blooms are not the only subjects for the garden photographer.

Layanee DeMerchant, author of the garden blog Ledge and Gardens, clearly understands that.

Take a look at her photos of the last days of the garden, when the flowers are overtaken by time and frost. 

Photo credit: Associated Press (2004) file photo.   

The pretty white flowers gleamed on the dark green box, and the price wasn't much. About the same as a couple of lattes.

So I bought some.

I have only ever forced a bulb once. (I don't even like the expression. Sounds like "at gunpoint.")

My neighbor Patty gave me an amaryllis for Christmas last year, and it actually grew and bloomed for me.

But, mostly, I am "The Land Houseplants Forgot." I don't have much in the way of windowsills or good light, except through the sliding glass door in the kitchen.

I sometimes put plants on the floor there, such as the basil when it is cold outside. But generally, the family objects.

Anyway, I bought a paperwhite narcissis kit: five bulbs, soil and a little plastic pot. I did this even though I have read time and again that paperwhites, for all their virginal beauty, have a distinctly unpleasant smell.

Paperwhites are also famous for flopping over from the sheer weight of themselves, but blogger Margaret Roach of A Way to Garden, suggests mixing eight parts water to one part gin or vodka and using that mixture to water the bulbs the first few times.

She got the tip from a veteran gardener at one of her lectures who swears the booze keeps the plants' leaves short.

I'm gonna give it a shot (modest bartending joke). Thank heaven the trick doesn't call for white wine...

Photo credit: Flickr/acertainworld

Of all the wonderful things in the wonderful universe of God, nothing seems to me more surprising than the planting of a seed in the blank earth and the result thereof. --  Celia Thaxter

Apparently garden gnomes are kind of like elves, who come out when you are not around and help you with your garden chores.

However, there is also a kind of PETA for gnomes. The group comes around and "liberates" gnomes that are enslaved in your garden and return them to the woods.

You can read more in Angela's newsletter.

By the way, there is also history, tradition and rules...yes, rules...for gazing balls in the garden.

I know. That was news to me, too.

Photo credit: Gardeners Supply

How I love the Mid-Atlantic region. Weather like this allows you to garden well past the time when the rest of the Northeast has oiled its pruners and put them to bed.

I was out this weekend, planting bulbs in containers (more on that later this week in my column in The Baltimore Sun), trimming back the hosta foliage and picking up all the twigs that landed in the yard after a wind storm.

My neighbor Bob and my neighbor Ruth think I am nuts, and that I "make work" in the garden. Bob gardens on a principle of benign neglect and Ruth is grateful when the chores are done for the season.

But I will continue to find things to do until the snow flies. And after, if we have a break in the weather.

Years ago, I wrote a column about my determination to keep gardening. It was about my son, Joseph, too. He was just a teen-ager when this column appeared in 2000. It seems like a million years ago now.

The column remains one of my favorites, and I share it here.

Photo credit: Baltimore Sun/Gene Sweeney (1998 file photo)

My 16-year-old was standing on the deck, smiling, and I knew by that rare expression on his face that I had amused him again with the inexplicable chores I create for myself in the garden.

"Dad," he hollered. "C'mere. Mom is trying to hold back the seasons."

A higher power had done that for me. The calendar said November, but I was sweating as I worked. I was watering, too, and that felt kind of silly.

"Mom," Joe said firmly. "It's over. Come inside. Relax."

He was talking about the season for gardening, but I told him he was wrong. It is never really over. It is only interrupted, perhaps, by an occasional snowstorm.

"There is always something to do in the garden," I said, and he shook his head and went back inside for another dose of college football.

I have always loved the mild, summery autumns of the mid-Atlantic region, and now that I have given myself over to gardening, I love this season even more.

Fall doesn't have the energy of spring, when you can almost feel the new growth pushing out of the ground. And it doesn't have the sunny radiance of summer, with that season's abundant growth and color.

In fact, aside from a few fading mums and some darkening sedum, there isn't much to look at in my fall garden. Even the hostas have wilted like lettuce that has been frozen and thawed. Nevertheless, I can feel the ground around me drinking in every last ray of the sun (and drop of water, too, this dry fall), and hoarding it against the winter to come.

There is plenty for me to do. Divide the daylilies and the irises. Rearrange the "furniture" in a newly planted bed that didn't grow into the shape I had imagined for it. Sprinkle a little bone meal there, a little lime here, some Epsom salts on the roses and some spent coffee grounds on the hydrangea.

Plant the narcissus bulbs and a few new perennials. Clean the tools and sort the supplies on the shelf in the garage. My gardening books give me an endless list of things to do before the frost seals the earth, and seals me inside my house.

I notice with some sadness that the seed in the birdfeeders does not disappear so quickly anymore, and I know most of my gardening companions are gone. I replace the seed with suet for the ones who winter over.

The last of the leaves fall like raindrops on my naked vegetable garden and I decide I will leave them there for the winter, like a coverlet for the worms. The rest go in the compost pile. I might not be much of a cook, I tell my disgusted children as I carry kitchen scraps outside, but I sure can make great dirt.

As I work, a breeze rustles the wind chimes, and I think about how remarkably warm the wind is for November. I remind myself to take them down before they rattle like Marley's chains in the bitter winds to come.

My garden gets a buzz cut in the fall. I cut the faded perennials back to the ground. But the ornamental grasses will stay until March winds blow them bald.

I fear the rake in my vulnerable gardens. So, on my hands and knees, I scrape the leaves out of my gardens with a gloved hand and cast them behind me onto the grass.

I hear the rus-s-s-k, rus-s-s-k of the rake, and I am momentarily confused by the sound. I rock back on my heels and look behind me to find my 16-year-old raking leaves.

I could tease him about this voluntary chore and ask a cynical question about what he is hoping for in return. But I say nothing and return to gently picking leaves out of my garden the way I once picked them out of a laughing toddler's hair.

We are silent as we work, the two of us. Trying to hold back time.