I just can’t help myself. The Japanese maples are totally knocking my socks off.

Since it’s forecast to be a beautiful weekend, why not come see for yourself? (The pictures don’t do it justice. Standing underneath one of these trees is like being submerged in pure pigment.) If you do visit, you’ll be guaranteed to catch a glimpse of what’s in the works for Christmas Sparkle too… (I’m not going to give that away here just yet.)

I think we gardeners are generally pretty good at finding color during a black&white winter but I still always feel like I should stock up before fall’s blaze dims. Even in the half-light of a gray day, oranges and reds, on Japanese maples especially, are so super-saturated right now that their leaves seem to fuse into a solid block of intensity. And I credit the yellow leaves for giving everything that strange glowy tawny tint though I should probably give all the shades of brown their due for that too.

And of course I wouldn’t want to diss the few things still – or starting to bloom. In honor of Garden Bloggers Bloom Day over at May Dreams Gardens (tomorrow), here are a couple of tried and true November bloomers. — I say these are November bloomers but the autumn flowering cherries (Prunus x subhirtella ‘Autumnalis’) in the Rose Garden have been my poster children for December the last few years. Evidently they loved our recent run of Indian Summer days. (Please excuse the blur – it’s impossible to get those tiny flowers to stand still on a windless day let alone a breezy one.)

Along with hording color, we’re also starting to forage for the bits and bobs we like to have on hand for embellishing the wreaths made in our upcoming (sold out!) workshops. Last year nature withheld her usual bounty but this year, not only is she being generous again, but we managed to find some treasures before they were whisked away with the fallen leaves. My only difficulty with task of foraging is having the fortitude to quit when tubtrugs and pockets are full. (I’m just as obsessive when I go to the beach. At least sweetgum seedpods don’t weigh as much as stones…)

Are you taking in Autumn’s last flash? And are you filling your pockets with treasures too?

It was a big and busy day yesterday, in more ways than one. We passed another milestone in this year’s garden calendar – the first real killing frost fell finally. And while that marked the official end of the growing season, we were glad for a chilly but sunshiny morning to finish planting — with the assistance of a small group of weather-proof volunteers — a few more ticking time bombs of hope for next year’s growing season. It’s hard to imagine just by looking at this tiny Tulipa clusiana ‘Lady Jane’ bulb, which looks for all the world to me like it has a lit fuse, that come spring it will burst into an exquisitely delicate pink-flamed flower. But that’s the promise so long as the squirrels don’t defuse it first. We also planted 300 wood sorrel (Oxalis adenophylla – I wish I had taken a picture of those hair-coverd fuzzbombs), a few hundred more crocus in the bed just outside the moongate, and 200 tiny winter aconite (Eranthis hyemalis) nuggets for our earliest visitors’ enjoyment. As much as I don’t just love the down-on-all-fours back break of poking narrow holes between the roots and stems of perennials and roses, I got kind of into it yesterday. There was definitely something cathartic in busting through a just-frozen crust of soil, with the sun warm on my back, and thinking about spring.

And now that the bulbs are all in, it’s time for us to think about winter. We took advantage of our volunteers’ extra hands to put the rest of the frost-nipped North Garden to bed. Gail and I feel a very grateful relief for being able to really focus on the next thing. It would be way too soon in real life to start decorating for Christmas but here at Blithewold, the mansion is almost completely gilded already and will be complete after the garden volunteers hang ornaments on the big tree next week. And here at the greenhouse Gail and I will be spending the next week and a half getting ready for the newest Christmas at Blithewold feature event, Christmas Sparkle. Every Friday night until Christmas the path from the mansion through the Enclosed Garden to the greenhouse will be lit with lanterns. There will be fires in the Enclosed Garden for marshmallow roasting (s’mores!) and hot chocolate in the greenhouse, which will be (as we like to think it always is) a welcoming wintery oasis of green growing things.

Has frost fallen on your garden yet? Are you focused now on the end of this season or are you still planting time bombs for the next?

You might (or might not) remember that a year and a half ago, a few members of Blithewold’s staff were invited to be in Martha Stewart’s Gardening Show studio audience. It was a hoot to sit in those bleachers watching the goings on of (part of) an empire and I have little memory anymore of what it felt like to drive to NYC in the wee hours of a should-be-sleeping-in morning. But I do still have some of the swag she gave away. By far the best thing in the tubtrug full of stuff was a book by her (magazine’s) gardening editorial director. Tomorrow’s Garden: Design and Inspiration for a New Age of Sustainable Gardening by Stephen Orr is full of gorgeous photos (taken by Orr) of inspiring modern gardens all over the country that illustrate a full spectrum of garden-with-nature possibilities. Along with telling his own garden’s story, he interviewed the other gardens’ gardeners on how their designs were created and maintained. And it’s generously peppered with plant lists and tips. The only beef I have with the book is that so many of the designs and ideas appeal to me that I’m no closer to deciding what to do in my own garden.

But it’s time for another look through it because this the time of year, when the season’s successes and problems are still fresh in my mind, is when I do my best thinking about garden design. Just this week, even in the soggy aftermath of the storm, Gail and I worked on a new vision for the moongate bed under the Sophora outside of the Rose Garden. That bed, which is our best example of dry shady conditions, has grown so well it had finally become almost overgrown. The plants we chose for that garden, things like epimedium, liriope, ginger, carex, hosta and tricyrtis, almost all going on 5 years old now, have proven themselves easily sustainable, with minimal supplemental watering during drought, and were finally in need of redistribution to (re)create a more aesthetically pleasing design. Since this is the best time to move epimedium (because it blooms so early in spring) and because this is when our brains are ready for that sort of exercise, we spent yesterday playing musical perennials. (Now that I’ve had a little practice again, I might be ready to make some decisions at home…)

If you are raring for inspiration the way I always am right about now, I say buy the book. –But wouldn’t it be even better to meet the author and hear his freshest thoughts on the subject? I’m so excited that Stephen Orr will be speaking at Blithewold’s annual Garden Design Luncheon next Thursday, November 8, 10am-2pm. A few (a very few) tickets are still available so register here asap. (Our fingers are crossed that his books will arrive in time from storm ravaged New York… If you already have a copy, bring it with you for him to sign.)

Hurricane (Superstorm, Frankenstorm) Sandy hit others much worse than it hit us. We were very lucky. It wasn’t even as bad as Irene last year when we lost something like 19 trees. Only one came down with this storm that I saw along with a lot of leaves and twigs. But even that was no worse than the average fall bluster and blow. We even still have power. (Oops. Should have knocked wood. As soon as I wrote that the power went out and I’m forced to finish the post by phone.)

One of the most hyped and scary predictions was for an epic tide and storm surge. We did get that, but again, not nearly as disastrously as some. The water had receded by the time I checked the Rock Garden this morning but it was clear that it had been inundated. Everyone talks about how Hurricane Bob (1991) covered the Rock Garden in seaweed and salt marsh hay. There was none of that this time. The garden was covered instead in the top layer of leaf litter from under the junipers. It was inches thick in some places, and higher up on the “little Mt. Hope” slope than I’ve ever seen water rise. I also don’t ever remember seeing so many drowned worms before, which either means my memory is faulty or the garden was under water for longer than ever (in my time) before, which is quite possible since I heard that low tide was as high as a high tide. As far as the health of the plants is concerned, time will tell. But coming this late in the season, when they are regrouping anyway for a winter’s rest, I imagine most will be right as rain come spring.

How did you and your garden come through the storm? (Safe and sound, I hope.)