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Harlequins Gardens

Harlequins Gardens

Boulder's specialist in well-adapted plants

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Home | Blog | Fall is the Time to Catch Yourself

Fall is the Time to Catch Yourself

November 12, 2024

by Dan Brawner

Mikl’s brother, Dan, has been writing a weekly, mostly humorous, column for a small-town Iowa newspaper for 33 years. Here’s his latest.

Just because it says so doesn’t mean you have to do it. Fall, I mean. We probably wouldn’t even think about seasonal expectation except now we’re in one of the imperative seasons whose name sounds like a command; the other one being spring.

Spring is a joyful season – and I don’t mean merely happy. To call spring “happy” is to miss the entire point of the thing. Like calling a Ferrari “good transportation”. Or a hot-air balloon ride over the Grand Canyon “sightseeing”. Spring is spring because following a long, cold winter after we’ve been Houdinied up in wool coats and throat-choking serpentine scarves with the frigid air hurting our faces and the ice-covered roads telling us we’d better stay home if we know what’s good for us, we can get wound pretty tight by around the first of March. When that first actually warm day comes to us with the sun like butterscotch, we are ready to spring, and nothing can stop us!

But fall is the season of stumbling. Summer is over and so is the chance to do all those fun things you planned but never got around to. Fall isn’t summer and it’s not quite winter. It’s a time to rake leaves and check the oil in the snow-blower. Sweet smells of harvest are in the air, but close the windows and lock them down tight. Sure, there are some wonderful fall days. But dig out those mittens an earmuffs.

Fall is awkward. Nature has tied your shoelaces together. You know things are about to get real. You can feel your feet slipping out from under you and there is nothing to grab onto.

You could fall into a paralysis of gloom, of course, and who could blame you? All around little animals are burrowing into the earth, hiding until the nightmare of winter is over, while those with wings flee south where it’s still green and there are bugs and seeds to eat.

Humans are generally pretty upbeat about the fall. Our Neanderthal ancestors weathered the Ice Age, after all. We got this. If only it didn’t sound so precarious to be teetering on the equinox. Fall? Who wants to do that?

Autumn may be a gentler term for fall, but the word “autumn” is a sort of mumble, humming softly at the end with “umn”, as if the summer is tired now and drifting off to sleep.

Falling. It’s an in-between state, not standing upright or yet flat on your face. When you think about it, fall is all about options and possibilities. Planting fifty yellow tulip bulbs in the fall won’t exactly hold back winter, but it just might bring on an early spring.

Categories: Blog, OLD-Archive, OLD-Blog

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We do not ship plants!

Our plants are for sale ONLY at our Boulder location. We DO NOT ship plants or any other products.  Come visit us!

Hours by Season

SUMMER HOURS
Tuesday-Sunday, 9AM-5PM

 

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Contact Us

303-939-9403 (Retail)
staff@harlequinsgardens.com

4795 North 26th St
Boulder, CO 80301

Sign-up for E-Newsletters!

Sign-up for our weekly e-newsletters to receive empowering gardening tips, ecological insights, and to keep up on happenings at Harlequin’s Gardens — such as flash sales and “just in” plants. We never share customer’s addresses!

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Our Hours

Seasonally, MARCH to OCTOBER.
MARCH HOURS:
Thursday-Sunday, 9AM-5PM

APRIL-OCTOBER HOURS:
Tuesday-Sunday, 9AM-5PM

JANUARY - FEBRUARY HOURS
Thursday-Saturday, 10AM-4PM

Mondays, CLOSED

The plants we grow are organically grown. All the plants we sell are free of bee-killing neonicotinoid pesticides.