I have had a particularly hard time letting go of summer this year and submitting to the possibility of winter. Perhaps my difficulty is rooted in the fact that summer itself seems reluctant to put its hands all the way up in the air in that universal gesture of You’ve-Got-Me. There’s still a spark. Even though we’ve had snow (which we all know = winter), and the dark morning and bitter cold wind made it impossible to get a clear shot of this Astrantia major, the point is, fergoshsakes, the Astrantia is blooming! Come on. It’s most certainly not July anymore but the Kniphofia still refuse to keel over and yesterday Gail rescued a praying mantis, of all things, from the rock wall. It’s December.

(Gail debated about bringing the mantis in. Always looking on the bright side though, she figured that it would die either way, and this way she’d gain a specimen for her collection.)

I give up. I’m following the mantis indoors. The temperatures have taken a wicked nose-dive this morning and we have just about finished outside anyway – the leaves are shredded, the dahlias are out of the ground (and in storage) and the gardens are cut back. We only have to go back out to trim down the whips on the roses but since they’re still blooming, we’ll wait a little longer before doing that. In a way – in lots of ways – I’m glad to go in and stay in. The greenhouse beckons.

Is your garden still showing any signs of a stubborn summer?

As a New Englander I can be pretty certain that the garden will be hit by a frost … sometime … and over the course of the fall, we coastal New Englanders can reasonably expect high tides, rain, big winds, Indian summer and even snow. But I wouldn’t have guessed that we’d have all of that within one December week. The fall has dragged on so interminably mildly that I’ve heard stories of Star Magnolias opening up (ours is still closed, thank goodness) and many annuals left to their own devices have continued to bloom like it’s their job and a few perennials have started working again. Even the roses haven’t been saved by the bell. (Fred and Dan lament that the roses are stealing their Rose Garden light-show – shown above, unlit. The roses enhance the show, says me, but it must also be said that Rosa ‘Champlain’ is working very hard to earn everyone’s undivided attention.)

Last Thursday dawned with a windy deluge, (not so) perfectly timed with high moon tide and once again (see last year’s pictures here) the Rock Garden became an island and yards of shore were swallowed by the bay.  And when the sun came out later that day, the balmy tropics blew in with it. Does anybody recall it ever being 65 shirt-sleeve degrees in December before?

And then Saturday night it snowed. I’d expect a heavy, wet, bone-chilling snow to qualify as a killing frost but it looks to me like some of our plants need further convincing. Hit or not, snow equals winter in my book – as does the month of December – and I’m chagrined to confess that, at home, even with plenty of time over a long and temperate fall, I was still caught with a few bulbs unplanted. Please tell me you’ve planted bulbs in the snow too! (I believe everyone should have that story to tell. –That must be why I waited.)

It is generally acknowledged that the difference between being temporarily pretty and eternally beautiful has something to do with bone structure. Like our own skin, which may or may not be wrapped around a Katherine Hepburn-esque skeleton, our garden hangs on its bones too. But although no plastic surgeon is truly capable of changing those of us unlikely to age gracefully, I think it is possible for everyone to have a garden every bit as timelessly handsome as, say, Gregory Peck. All we need, aside from a plan, is … time. Plus patience. (Isn’t it interesting that, when it comes to standards of beauty in a garden, age is usually a benefit rather than a liability?)

It’s easy to recognize an eternally beautiful garden. During the height of a colorful summer, you might not even be aware of why it’s so beautiful. But over the winter it hits you that the garden is every bit as stunning, stark-raving naked. Some properties (like Blithewold) are sublimely situated and while, like the curl in one’s hair, that’s definitely part of beauty, it’s not the be-all and end-all. What the garden really needs is structure within its perimeter and view to keep it from being as boneless and boring as our cutting bed in winter. It needs permanent elements – trees with muscles, rocks maybe, buildings (most of us have a house in the middle of our garden if not a garage and sheds too), and some might say to include a water feature – anything worth looking at even after the summer’s skin is shed. And those features should fit the scale of the garden’s face like expressive eyebrows and chiseled cheeks.

The last leaves haven’t even fallen yet but I’m already jazzed to think about Gregory Peck – I mean the gardens’ bone structure. The Display Garden still has a ways to go before it’s truly handsome in its own right but now it’s much easier to see what it needs. — My own garden at home cries out for eternal beauty too and there is where my patience will be truly tested: Good bones take such a long time to build.

Does your garden have good bone structure? Do you have plan(t)s to improve it?