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

The question of what it means to “preserve a garden” has come up a lot in our master plan workshops and meetings. (For those who might not know because I’ve probably never mentioned it here, Blithewold is going through a master plan process to help us navigate into and through our future.) For gardeners, preservation is sort of a strange concept because death and change are such important cycles in the life of a garden. And we probably all have the expectation that our garden will die when we do or when our interest fades (perish the thought) or when we lose the function in our green thumbs. Joe Eck and Wayne Winterrowd said it best,

“Gardens by their very nature are fragile beings that live in the two dimensions of time and care. For their very survival they are dependent on weather, on soil conditions, on predators that come silently in the night, on the neglect or inattention of their owners, for none of us lives forever or particularly wants to… Still, we can leave no endowment behind. And we cannot imagine the parking. So, perhaps, the garden dies with us.” (from Our Life in Gardens)

In some rare cases, when a gardener dies, the gardener’s spirit and in fact, their garden too, may live on – not preserved in aspic; not caught in a moment in time like a photograph, but to-be-continued. A garden has to live and die every day the way gardens do, at the hands, mercy and whim of those devoted to planting, maintaining and enjoying it. Marjorie Lyon wished that Blithewold be opened to the public after her death. She was a gardener like her mother before her. And all of us who work in or simply enjoy the gardens are keepers of their spirit. Their gardens live.

A couple of weeks ago the world lost another great gardener. I never had the pleasure of meeting Wayne Winterrowd or seeing his and Joe Eck’s garden, North Hill in Vermont but they were to be our speakers at our upcoming Garden Design Luncheon. Julie Murphy, Blithewold’s education coordinator was in touch with Wayne several times over the last few months and said, “Wayne was above and beyond kind and funny. His emails were so much fun to read! It makes me so sad to think I did not get to know this man better.” If those of us who hadn’t even met Wayne yet can feel so robbed by his death, it’s impossible to imagine the sadness and shock of those who knew him well. They will be the ones charged with preserving his spirit and sharing it with us.

We hope that Wayne’s partner in life and gardens, Joe Eck will be able to find some solace in the garden they created together, and in continuing to teach, write and pass their love of plants and gardens on to us. I am stunned and grateful that Joe has offered to keep their Garden Design Luncheon engagement as a tribute to Wayne. A portion of the event’s proceeds will go to a memorial fund for the planting of a grove of birch trees at North Hill. Information for contributing to the memorial fund directly may be found on the North Hill website. For more information about the luncheon (November 4th at the RI Country Club) and to register,please click here.