Sticks Week

In week 2008/43, bare trees and vines are starting to emerge as noticeable features, even as other trees remain completely green and untouched by autumn. Almost all the leaves are gone from Vinus, Gingko, Acer negundo and Paulownia, creating a mixed effect in Zone 8 gardens: berries everywhere, many golden leaves, a few late flowers and bare sticks. Perennial Paeonia vegetation has died back completely. This is the week when European oaks, a common feature of our sandy district, begin to turn yellow, while the leaves continue to gradually thin on the Betulus, a tree that takes about two months to strip. The Japanese maples have reached their richest shade of red, but we are still waiting in Zone 8 for Fagus sylvatica to demonstrate its gold qualities. In Zone 7, the beech forests are at their fullest glory, as we have just seen this year in the Ilm Park at Weimar behind the garden cottage of Johann Wolfgang Goethe and as we saw last year in the wooded valley below the Falkenstein in the eastern Harz mountains.