As days shorten, attention turns not just to football, but to such real life topics as harvest and preparation for winter. We tend to plan ahead more now than at any other time of the year. It’s a time of cutting, splitting, and stacking of firewood, canning garden produce, weather stripping, locating the snow shovel, sending the kids back to school, etc. Last minute repairs and painting take on greater urgency. We focus on the future because we have to. Soon those coats, hats, boots, and gloves will be needed.

Many familiar summer birds have already left on migration. Asters and goldenrods decorate the countryside with that familiar combination of purple, blue, and yellow. When the kids were small, we’d make our annual trek to Tanner’s Orchard for apples, donuts, pumpkins, preserves, and goat feeding.

Fall is a good time to plant a tree. Consider where you’d like some shade: a patio area; on the house; or just a nice place to relax with a lawn chair. Be careful to select a tree native to Central Illinois (for the sake of our local insects and birds, and because natives tend to do well). Local landscape nurseries can help with planting or with how-to instructions. Oak is an excellent choice, with several varieties from which to choose. Of the many trees we’ve planted over the years, my favorite is a white oak. It’s now producing a ‘crop’ of acorns, and the leaves show signs of having fed several species of caterpillars throughout the summer. The wren house is empty. That beautiful complex song of the house wren won’t be back until next spring. The native plants you add to your landscape will insure that critters will find plenty of cover and food. Birds can find insect larvae to feed their nestlings in the spring and fruits/ seeds in fall.

Won’t be long until trees will once again paint the Illinois River Valley with their spectacular mix of hues from gold to maroon to red to brown… and all shades in between. Sunny autumn days will be punctuated by nights that are colder and longer.

Then there is a kind of magic that’s not always welcome. Like manna from heaven, free mulch will rain down on home and garden. What do we do with this valuable landscape resource? Do we take advantage of this opportunity to enrich our trees and gardens with a new leafy blanket? Or do we label leaves, “Landscape Waste,” and put them out by the curb as garbage, or pile them in the gully?

Nearly everyone will be getting into that familiar autumn activity of leaf raking (or in some cases, leaf blowing). But more folks are figuring out that this stuff, far from being landscape waste, is actually valuable. We’ve asked neighbors to toss their leaves in our yard rather then just throwing them out by the street. Leaves are mulch and mulch is good for plants.

Peoria’s former city Arborist, Elroy Limmer, used to say that if you can only manage to do one thing for your tree… the most valuable one thing would be mulch. Lawn produces root toxins and stresses trees. A yard tree with mulch placed around it instead of lawn can triple its fine root mass. This makes it far more disease and drought resistant. Besides encouraging root growth, mulch beds cool soil, hold moisture, kill grass, eliminate accidental lawn mower damage to the tree’s trunk, add nutrients, and resist weed growth.

You gather the leaves with rake and/ or rotary mower and form a large (10 to 20 foot diameter) donut of leaves around the tree’s trunk, being careful not to have the leaves actually touch the trunk. If you just rake them up, it’s a good idea to wet them down with a hose so they don’t blow around. If you use a mower, the leaves are chopped up and less likely to scatter, particularly if they are wet. Don’t worry if the pile is a couple feet deep. By mid spring, the leaves will have melted down into a neat bed for those beautiful shade tolerant perennials, from columbines to hostas to ferns. Avoid annuals within the drip line of a tree (unless they are in pots). Periodic digging damages roots, harming the tree.

Planting and caring for a native tree is a contract between generations. It’s planning ahead and thinking about a future where there will be shade and bird nests and acorns. Trees will outlive us. We plant the shade where our grandchildren can play. It’s a perfect way to make a positive difference in the lives of others.

“Trees, trees against the sky –

O I have loved them well!

There are pleasures you cannot buy,

Treasurers you cannot sell,

And not the smallest of these

Is the gift and glory of trees. . . .

So I gaze and I know now why

It is good to live – and to die. .

Trees and the Infinite Sky.”

Robert W. Service

September is a great time to set up a bird feeder. Dark oil sunflower seed is a good all-around seed, particularly from a hanging feeder. Place it over a mulch bed so the seed hulls can enhance the mulch. Safflower is attractive to cardinals in particular. Crushed sunflower hearts are a favorite food of goldfinches, chickadees, and house finches. You may even see pine siskins and redpolls visiting your feeder. Millet and cracked corn can be placed on flat stones on the ground or on a screened platform feeder (to keep it dry). Sparrows, mourning doves, and juncos prefer to feed at ground level. They are rarely seen perching on hanging feeders. Suet will attract woodpeckers, chickadees, blackbirds, and even an occasional robin.

For more information and advice about native trees or about backyard bird feeding, visit Forest Park Nature Center in Peoria Heights. While you’re there enjoy a hike in the woods. Nature Center staff can be reached at (309) 686-3360.