Drought Might Dim Vermont Fall Foliage A Little

The August drought  followed by recent rains have caused
 this oddity at a St. Albans, Vermont dog park.
This small tree thinks it's May with new spring growth. 

Now that it's September and the kiddos are back act school, we're really thinking autumn in Vermont. 

You know, apples, and (ugh) pumpkin spice and fall foliage. Which begs the questions: Will the drought blunt our famous fall colors somewhat this year?  

The answer is: Probably. 

Before you spiral into depression over the prospect, it'll still be pretty this fall. Gorgeous like it always is. But, as if is often the case, there will be flaws in the orange, gold and yellow tapestry of our landscape. 

In a few spots, the color is already lost.

Especially on exposed south facing hillsides with thin, rocky soil, the flash drought that developed in August has already wilted leaves or turned them brown or yellow and those leaves are falling off quickly. Luckily, that's not the majority of trees in Vermont, but there's definitely parts of some hillsides that are already brown. Or at least a dull orange or yellow because of the dry weather. 

Many other trees, while still green have lost some leaves. They'll do that to conserve water during droughts. Also, I've seen leaf scorch. That's caused by the drought, too, along with the extreme heat of mid-August that left the edges of leaves on some trees brown, while the center of the leaves are still green. 

Climate change messes up our foliage season. The flash drought that developed over the past month is a classic example.  That climate change also has alter the autumn schedule. 

Peak fall colors arrive a little later in the season than they used to decades ago. It's possible - but not definite - that this year's drought could actually reverse that later trend and make the peak colors a little earlier than they've been in recent years. That'll be especially true if we have a very cool September. We'll see!

OTHER FOLIAGE PROBLEMS

Springtime and the very start of summer was quite wet, and that encouraged some blights to develop on a few trees. The blight causes leaves on some maples and other plants turn brown or black and fall off now. 

The blight has really affected lilac bushes. You see many of them - including one in front of my house -  have brown leaves that have largely already fallen from the bushes. 

Lilacs aren't known for their colorful fall foliage, so this blight won't affect the autumn scenery much.  But those lilacs are looking pretty uncharacteristically ugly right now.  You'll want to rake up and discard the fallen lilac leaves. And if you get a nice day this winter go in and thin your lilac bushes to improve air circulation.

The good news is that next spring the lilacs should all still leaf out and bloom beautifully like they always do.

The drought might mess with our Vermont autumn
colors a little, but didn't cause this problem. The 
emerald ash borers killed these trees near 
Swanton, Vermont. 

Another odd thing I've seen here in northwestern Vermont over the past couple of days is new spring leaves on some bushes.  The drought made leaves drop from some bushes and trees. We've had some welcome rains recently, and now new leaves are appearing, as it it's May, not September. 

Though this isn't great for the trees and bushes, because it's making them use more reserves, most should survive and leaf out again next spring 

However, one very sad, permanent loss to our fall colors is the ongoing demise of our ash trees.  Ash trees have tended to add some beautiful golds and purples to the autumn color palette, which really have helped to make Vermont's foliage season that much more spectacular.

The emerald ash borer has killed or is killing most of the ash trees in large swaths of the state. In parts of the Champlain Valley, stands of ash trees now look like they do in mid-winter. They're completely dead.

The ash borer hasn't affected all of Vermont yet, so our ash trees in many locations will continue to make their contributions to our lucrative foliage season. But, I'm afraid ash trees will soon go the way of the stately elms we had in the mid-20th century and the huge chestnut trees we had around and before 1900. The end of our valuable ash trees is a terrible loss.

All the rest of our forests are getting ready to go dormant for the season, so renewed rains probably won't help much. That's especially true in southeast Vermont, which largely missed out on beneficial rains this past Friday and Saturday. The dry week we're having ahead of those rains is probably worsening the drought conditions in southern parts of the state. 

It's also beginning to look like a series of weather fronts due Thursday night through Saturday might focus the rain once again in the northwestern half of the state. But since that event is a few days away, that scenario could change. 

Despite the fact it's already September, the weather over the next few weeks might renew some of autumn's brilliance. I've heard quite a few observers note if we have a lot of chilly nights and bright sunny days (with adequate rainfall mixed in) during September, leaves will tend to be brighter and more colorful at the end of the month and in October. 

Fall foliage in Vermont is different every year because the weather is different every year. The best places also change every year. A hillside that was amazing last October might look "meh" this year. Or, a vista that was just OK last year will blow your socks off this foliage season. 

But some things never change. Vermont's forest will put on a big show, it'll look fantastic.  We'll be overrun by tourists. Social media influencers will run amok in and near tourist towns. We'll all get to shuffle through drifts of fallen leaves in crisp autumn air. 

As those beautiful leaves swirl in the chilly autumn winds, us Vermonters will glance up at stunning hillsides in our brave little state, and then turn back to the task of buttoning down everything for another long winter.   

 

The Hero Lilac

The big lilac in front of my house put on a huge, aromatic
show this spring, infusing me with a bit more confidence
in the rest of the garden season. 

When I bought my house back in November, 2007, the place was a wreck.  

Before me, it had been owned by - no lie - a schizophrenic pot dealer with a penchant for guns and a huge overestimation of his plumbing and electrical skills.  

But I needed a bargain fixer upper and this was my ticket. 

The house had good bones, though it was a wreck. The plumbing leaked, the electrical system was about as far from code as you could get. The property comprises an acre, all overgrown with weeds, dead shrubs and tangles of wild grapevine. 

However, I envisioned a place that would eventually become a paradise, a comfortable home with beautiful gardens where a weather geek like me can watch and measure the change of seasons, the pluses and minuses of Vermont weather, and for better or worse, changes in the climate.

Thanks to my husband Jeff and his exquisite design vision, the house is now gorgeous. (Bonus: Also safe and up to building code standards).And because of my love of playing in the dirt, the gardens aren't too shabby. 

This process from beast to beauty has to start from a place of potential. The house was just a simple rectangle, a blank slate on which Jeff could work his magic. 

The property had pieces that promised beauty, too. The back yard has three enormous poplar trees, The Triplets as I call them, that anchor the back yard gardens.

When I bought the house, there was a large but battered lilac bush out front just begging for some TLC.

I'm a Vermonter, and I know it's sacrilegious to destroy a lilac. And this old lilac had potential, like the rest of the property. Lilac and I were fast friends.

I quickly tore out all the dead limbs and stems. In December of 2007,  pruned the tangles. Contained the tendrils running out toward the drive. Lilac rewarded me in May, 2008 with gorgeous blooms and hasn't let me down since.

Except for one incident that wasn't Lilac's fault. I'll get to that in a bit. 

Blooms on my lilac were so profuse the branches sagged,
leaving me with this gorgeous view at my front door

Lilacs are tough old birds. They'll survive just fine for decades after the house they were near has long since disappeared. So I learned never to worry about Lilac. This guy fights back. 

In April, 2010, we had an early spring. By the last week of the month, Lilac had leafed out and had plenty of flower buds. Then on April 27-28, thirteen inches of snow flattened twelve-foot-tall Lilac to the ground. 

Then it thawed and Lilac sprung back almost as if nothing had happened. I had to remove one relatively minor branch that had cracked. 

Lilac became my measure of how late or early spring was. Lilac bloomed spectacularly by the first of May, 2012, the earliest I'd seen that happen. It was a remarkably warm spring. It ran a little late in May, 2014 after a cool spring. 

But Lilac was always reliable.

Maybe it's a sign of how off the rails the climate has gotten, but last year was the first time I've seen Lilac's spring glory diminished by goofy weather. 

Spring, 2021 was very early, almost as early as 2012. The florets were budding and growing by April 20. Then, on April 21-22, it snowed.  No problem, Lilac has proven it can handle that. Then, with temperatures in the 20s, roaring northwest winds and snow squalls ripped through during the morning and early afternoon of April 22.

That managed to kill many of the florets on Lilac.  It subsequently bloomed a little bit, but the show was very much diminished last spring. It made me wonder a little bit if gardening is even worth it. If climate change can diminish tough Lilac, what will it do to everything else, eventually. 

Apparently, Lilac wants me to buck up.  This year, another early spring, but not as early as last year arrived. There was one scare of sorts with another super heavy, wet snowstorm on April 19 that weighed down the branches, but that ended quickly with no problem.

The blooms this year were more than I've ever seen. Everyone in Vermont appears to have had a great lilac year, but Lilac by my house outdid itself. You can scarcely see any leaves, the blooms were so profuse. The branches were so heavy with blooms they sagged almost to the ground. 

Talk about encouragement! The breeze blowing the aroma of the lilacs through the house was enough to snap me out of my negative mood.'

A too-early bout with heat and humidity (yay, climate change again) made the lilac show come and go faster than usual. The blooms have faded now, but they did their job. 

Yes, I'm way behind on gardening this year.  But I can go forward with confidence, with Lilac's spring blessing. I don't know what kind of setbacks I might suffer this summer, - drought, floods, severe windstorms, spongy moth caterpillars - who knows? 

In the age of climate change, you need any type of confidence I can collect.