I don’t know if it’s normal to set a July 4th deadline to get everything planted in the garden or if we choose that date because in Bristol, RI all roads and all days of the year lead there. Bristol boasts the longest running Fourth of July parade in the whole world (this is its 227th year) and Bristolians take the celebration very seriously. Gardens and yards all over town – even off the parade route – are primped to garden tour standards and (almost) every house is draped in yards of bunting, festooned with banners, and flying flags from every flagpole and yardarm. A full year of preparation goes into the celebration, which starts officially on June 14, Flag Day. After a concert series, an orange crate derby, nightly unofficial fireworks, a carnival, a drum corps showdown and official fireworks, the celebration crescendos with an hours-long parade of floats, firetrucks, and amazing marching bands from all over the country that follows miles of red, white, and blue stripe down Hope and High Streets. It’s a sight to be seen – every year if it’s your favorite thing – or at least once in a lifetime.

Even though we have this event to look forward to and mark our days by,we really shoot to have everything out of the greenhouse and planted by now more because we can count on it to get even hotter and more humid from here on in. We can’t keep watering nursery pots and watching plants suffer as they’re desperate to take advantage of the weather and grow. Because we have a lot of to-dos on our list, a specific deadline always helps keep us focused on the most important things. This year we’re in good shape to make our goal: the greenhouse is almost completely empty – there are just a few plants left that need to go in the container garden, and as of this blistering morning, we planted most of the last annuals and tender perennial stock plants in the Display Garden.

To me that’s a good enough reason to celebrate the fourth – all roads and all days have led to this moment too. Not that it ends here for us by any means. There are plenty of other things to get on with, like enjoying the gardens’ own ongoing fireworks display. The picture above left doesn’t do justice to the most massive delphinium I’ve ever seen (there is something almost blasphemous about Delphinium ‘Pagan Purples’ – the spike is well over my head and as fat as my thigh); and Agastache ‘Acapulco Orange’ (which overwintered in the garden) and the betony and red hot poker combination make us all exclaim,”Ooo! Ahhh!” – and from now until fall our only deadlines will be daily ones to keep the gardens bursting in air.

Do you set a planting deadline in your garden too? Do you celebrate the 4th?

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

We heard our first cicada today and that to me is the signal of high mid-summer. All along this season we’ve been a good two weeks ahead – starting way back with the daffodils. I hadn’t allowed myself to worry about what this might mean for August and September until I saw the daylily Hemerocallis ‘Autumn Minaret’ start to bloom yesterday. Although it’s certainly lovely, it’s an end of season sort of color. Better that it would wait and bloom with the dahlias we just planted in that bed. But gardens will grow – willy-nilly sometimes – and new combinations that we never could have imagined are always welcome, like them a lot or not. And I do like seeing Autumn Minaret with the freshly opened – and easily 4 foot tall – Echinacea ‘Envy’…

I have been meaning to do a post just on this exciting topic alone, but without further ado – and because every week should be pollinator’s week (not just last week) – drum roll, please … we have bees! Jeff from Aquidneck Honey has placed these hives of honeybees collected from local swarms down by our nursery beds. We are really enjoying watching all of their busy activity throughout the gardens.

To carry you through the weekend, just in case your plans don’t include hanging out here in Bristol for the 4th (5th) of July parade, here are some Friday photo ops from the growing Display Garden.

How does your garden grow this weekend? Does it think it’s August too?

Happy 4th – whatever month this is!

It’s not often that little Rhody makes the national news. By now most of you have probably already heard that we just had a “100 year flood”. (Only we’re not supposed to call it that. – It’s just that the flooding here was worse than any on record. Ever.) The first rainstorm last week, while I was away, already set us back a bit in the gardens. It was too squishy-wet for Gail and the volunteers to prune roses or cut back perennials without compacting the beds and then this week was a washout. Literally.

Much of Bristol was under water on Tuesday, mostly because storm drains couldn’t handle the deluge, but compared to other parts of the state we were on the lucky side. All things considered, I’m happy to report that Blithewold didn’t fare too badly. The major damage was to our paths, which became a network of grand canyons. Visitors beware: the Shrub Walk is CLOSED until further notice.

Not only have the grounds become a slippery slope (everyone, please be careful walking around the grounds!) but spring seems to be suddenly sliding along at a prodigious rate. No fooling, the daffodils are refusing to wait for Daffodil Days (April 10 – May 2) and that’s why I included my first Daff Cam shot of the season at the top of this post. We’re hoping that they hold off peaking until at least the 10th. I’ll keep you updated.

Spring is coming along so quickly that I’m suddenly feeling a little panicked. The roses broke dormancy last week – right on time with the forsythia, which is a good week early as compared to the last few years. I’m desperate to get the roses pruned so they start sending all this good early energy into only the strongest canes. We still have a lot of perennials to cut back too and it’s so much trickier to do that when the new growth is growing gangbusters and getting in the way of snips. Not only that but now that spring is here and there’s everything to do all at once, I’m worried that in my busy-ness and hurry to catch up on the work I’ll miss my favorite season altogether. It’s an occupational hazard – but hopefully preventable. I want to hold onto each moment and see every unfurl. So with the sun set to be out all weekend, I plan to put my own brakes on and take as much of it in as I can. You too?

Do you worry that spring will go by before you can fully enjoy it? Maybe an early start to spring means it will linger longer? We can only hope…

The boundary between this world and the next is said to be thin right now. – Personally I think it’s on the thin side most days but it’s good to have a reason to honor the ancestors and welcome them back among us. Blithewold’s family is never far from here and our hearts – they live on through the property and our collective love of it. And I feel certain that they were overseeing our work yesterday as a few volunteers finished burying the undead (the tulips!) in the North Garden.

I thought it was only fitting for this Halloween post to visit the place where some of the ancestors have been laid to rest. Juniper Hill Cemetery is a 19th century garden cemetery, which is a type of burial ground designed as much for the solace of the living as it is to house the dead. Juniper Hill is a place of pure quiet and deep shade on a hill overlooking Bristol harbor and, these days, seems forgotten by all but a few dog walkers (and the Bristol Historical Society which offers grave and tree tours occasionally). I have to admit that I visit this place weekly, if not daily, but I think it has never been more sublimely beautiful than it is right now.

Happy Halloween!