We know it’s fall – that it’s still only October – by the color of sky and the leaves on -and off- the trees. Temperatures tell a different story. The last few days have so been beautifully warm and sunny that planting the bulbs was a (day)dream-job and not a chore at all. But even though the weather was so mild and spring-like, it still felt a little strange to be thinking so much about that distant season right now. That said, it doesn’t feel half as strange to think about spring now as it did in August when we sent out our order.

Since then I had completely forgotten what we ordered and which gardens all of the bulbs were intended for. Thank goodness we wrote it down. (If only our gardens intern Lilah had pasted the pictures in our garden notebooks like she had done in years past… She wasn’t slacking. I blame myself for misplacing the extra catalog somewhere within the chaos of the potting shed.)

We’ve got some pretty pink and yellow tulips going into the Rose Garden – including many more Lady Janes because we loved them so much, along with chionodoxa and more snow drops for the dry shade bed. The North Garden has a new scheme too that includes ‘China Town’, which is a pink and green tulip with variegated foliage that we trialed in the Cutting Garden last year. And the Cutting Garden was planted with last year’s favorites from the Rose and North gardens along with a few new to try -  like ‘Antoinette’, ‘Perestroyka’, and ‘Lemon Snow Parrot’. We also tucked a few special treats like foxtail lily and fritillaria into the display beds. I’d say I can’t wait to see them all bloom, but the fact is, I can wait. I’m not ready for spring and because fall is so lovely I don’t want to even think ahead to spring quite yet. So I’m going to put the tulip lists and catalogs away, completely forget what we planted, and just look forward to being surprised come April.

Are you thinking ahead to spring? – I know you are if you’re planting bulbs. Are you also trying not to think ahead too much? (Are you thinking of Christmas yet? The mansion is already a whirlwind of decorating activity – I’m definitely not ready for that.)

As the summer went along, getting hotter and drier by the day I started to fret that fall color might be a bust this year. But I shouldn’t have worried. Although it might not be quite the same kind of fiery blaze as last year, it’s a veritable rainbow out there. I could start to worry a little now about driving off the road…

I was also convinced that we’d have a much earlier frost than usual. Wrong again. The temperatures have suddenly soared from merely chilly 40′s and 50′s (F) to sunny and hot with fog in between. Crickets are still singing; honeybees and bumbles are still on every bloomin’ flower and none of us is quite ready to let go yet after all.

Is fall living up to your expectations?

Usually when people enter the Rose Garden they take a deep breath in through the nose and heave a big blissed-out sigh of appreciation …

Not today. The roses are still blooming; they are still sweetly fragrant, but the smell of the compost we started to spread yesterday is a little overwhelming. We decided to use Bristol’s own compost made from yard waste and … biosolids. If you’re not already familiar with the term, biosolids are the byproduct of sewage treatment. It’s nutrient rich and once it’s been thoroughly composted, pathogen-free. And pretty stinky.

Earlier this week, Gail and I visited the Bristol compost facility – which helped to facilitate deciding between spending the moon on our favorite organic compost that has to be trucked from all the way across the state, and getting Blithewold’s truck filled with the free compost made less than 2 miles away from here. We have both used the rich, dark biosolids compost in our own gardens (because it’s free!) but had never gotten the full scoop, so to speak.

It’s Class A, top grade compost made in a 20 year old facility (soon to be solar powered!) and is free to home gardeners who are able to pick it up themselves and sold to landscapers and garden centers all over the state. Sludge is trucked in from the sewage treatment plant, mixed with finely chopped yard waste, cooked for a minimum of 28 days and aerated by the most enormous rototiller on the planet (says me.) It’s tested for pathogens (fecal coliform) periodically throughout the cycle and the content is fully analyzed for heavy metal levels. Each batch must be within allowable limits – and 100% pathogen-free – before being released from the process. The people who make it are very proud of their product and seem to have good reason to be – plants love it.

We have been talking about amending the soil in the Rose Garden for years now. The soil is probably better than average, evident by the size and health of some of the plants in the garden, but has become more and more compacted and cement-like as we’ve all trampled it over the years. Some roses have struggled to thrive and it’s getting harder and harder, especially in a dry season, to water the garden well. I love thinking that this fall’s rain will really soak in right now rather than run off. And the unpleasant odor, which should dissipate within a few days, to me is a harbinger of next season’s sublime fragrance of a garden full of healthy plants. (Healthy soil = healthy plants.) We’ve taken so much – pleasure, plants and soil – from that garden over the years, it feels really good to finally give something back.

Have you given anything back to your garden yet? (Fall is the perfect time…) Have you ever tried compost made with biosolids? What do you think of it?

I have gotten out of the habit of getting here extra early every morning to walk the property in search of interesting things. Lately, I have really only had eyes and time for the gardens. I realized after finally walking around again yesterday morning that just like staring at a computer screen for too long, my eyes were in desperate need of a stretch. For months now I’ve been looking at the gardens from an arm’s length, sometimes a rake’s length away. I have tried to remember to step back to take in a whole garden bed but it’s probably been a while since I’ve fully focused for more than a minute on the entire landscape in front of me.

I think there’s a natural shift to our gaze as we transition into a new season. I looked outward all summer – after looking down more during the spring and inward through the winter. Now I find myself looking up.I’ve also been out of the habit of using my eyes as a macro lens to enjoy the details. The minutiae of fall is every bit as fascinating as spring.

Although I’m more interested now in looking for the senescent signs of change and the promises of spring locked in seeds and buds, the gardens are still blooming away. (To see what’s in bloom around the world today, visit Garden Bloggers Bloom Day hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens.) Several species of bees and even a few straggler monarch butterflies remain focused on our flowers, and because of their activity Gail and I have had to adjust our October schedule a little. We’ve taken annuals out of the North Garden and started to put it “to bed” but we just couldn’t bear to take everything out of the Rose Garden. Next week. And we’ll leave the Display Gardens (aside from a few stock plants and most of the cutting garden) as intact as possible until the bitter end.

Have you had to adjust your focus to get a good look at fall? Have you started putting your garden to bed?

Along with GBBD, today is also Blog Action Day and the focus this year is clean water. Although I am not officially participating, I offer this link once again for my local readers who might be as interested as I am in conserving water. Remember, one inch of rain on a 1000 square foot roof can fill hundreds of gallons!

This morning a fellow dog walker said to me, “Ugh – this rain is horrible!” To which I replied, “yeah… but we need it.” She looked at me a little sideways. And to myself I said, “Are you kidding me? This is GREAT!” My dog was as muddy as hers and I couldn’t see past the drops on my glasses but gardeners are a breed of human that take the bad with the good. And rain? It’s a good thing! Especially in the dusty wake of a drought. “Some days must be dark and dreary”*. — It’s about time. And it’s part of what I love about October. Nothing sets off the colors of fall like a fine mist on a gray day.

It is a heavy rain today giving us a welcome chance to catch up on greenhouse work and to hash out our annual assessments of the gardens. We’ve worked out a schedule for October and provided it doesn’t rain the entire month (and of course, we need it to) we’ll start taking the gardens apart to make way for projects.

We’ve already started to bring in stock plants – tender perennials from which we’ll take more cuttings – and we hope to have all of the container plants in the greenhouse by the end of next week. It might kill us to do it, but Gail and I will also harden our hearts to take annuals – still in glorious bloom – out of the North and Rose Gardens next week, right after the house closes for the season. (Remember, Columbus Day is last day to see the house before Christmas – and all of the gardens in full glory, come to think of it.) The week after that we hope to turn a load of compost in to the starved Rose Garden. And we’ve got to play musical perennials in the North Garden – the lady’s mantle (Alchemilla mollis) needs dividing (it’s been 3 years and the plants are huge) and to be moved back to keep the flowers from blurring the garden’s ultra-crisp edges. And we have to do all of that of course before we plant the tulips, which we have to do before we lose our volunteers for the season. Whether a little rain, or a lot of rain falls in this life, we have a schedule to keep.

What are your plans for October? Is it raining?

*quote and post title from a poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow