That’s my answer for anyone who might wonder why I haven’t posted in a few days. 4000 bulbs, give or take. Planted. Mostly. Still planting… Over the last couple of weeks, Gail and Tricia and I have tried hard to get all 3686 bulbs that we ordered along with the few hundred tulips we saved from last spring placed and in the ground before we let the volunteers take a much deserved winter break. We’re also trying to stay a step ahead of the weather – something wicked this way comes next week, according to forecasters… One of the hardest parts of rushing to get the bulbs in is having to make way for them by taking out plants that are still blooming. (We plant tulips in the same slots as our annuals.) In a perfect scenario, frost would have done the dirty work for us. But this year there are still bees and butterflies working the African blue basil, dahlias and zinnias. Every plant that came out broke our hearts a tiny bit so we left as much as we could, especially in the Rose Garden.

The physical act of planting is also not easy (except wherever the ground was loosened by taking annuals out). The volunteers did the lion’s share, down on all fours in the bulb hunchback – my least favorite yoga pose. And we have all cheered ourselves up as we stretched and arched our backs back into proper alignment that the promise of a spectacular spring is worth a  few hours of discomfort. I watched everyone get the same glazed look on their face as they cast ahead to the days when tulips like Blue Spectacle, Golden Artist, and Akebono bloom in concert. When unearthly earthy Fritillaria persica dangle deep purple-black bells on 2′ stems in the Rose Garden, and Allium Pinball Wizard lights up the North Garden. We planted more varieties of muscari and scilla, endless crocus, and are trying brodiaea, pushkinia, and a tiny oxalis that hasn’t been gone in yet because we can’t make up our minds where we’d love to see it more – the Rock Garden or the Rose?

Bulb planting takes a kind of blind faith and strong constitution that I believe must be unique to gardeners as a species. Bulbs are the ultimate in delayed gratification, dormant proof of gardeners’ collective optimism because they give absolutely no hint of what’s to come. We can only hope as they go in that they’ll spring out again in some more fabulous form. And our fingers have to stay crossed that this year that the squirrels and deer find plenty of other things to eat…

Have you started planting bulbs in your garden yet? Are you pinning your hopes for spring on anything new?

I have been focusing so intently on the gardens lately (I’ll post about why next week) that I think I might have been in danger of forgetting to get excited about fall color. But over the last few days the sun’s spotlight illuminated autumn’s very edges and gave me the reminder I needed to look up and out again. I’ve heard that the stars have aligned to give us a spectacular fall – we’ve had just the right amount of sun and rain over the summer and perfect temperatures now; no Hurricane Irene to brown the leaves prematurely like last year, and, knock wood, there aren’t any October snowstorms in the forecast. Whatever happens in the coming weeks, autumn already looks spectacular here. So bright and pretty that it’s hard for me to imagine that it will peak later. Maybe we’ll have a more gradual plateau of sustained gorgeousness…

Is fall shaping up to be a beauty in your garden too? – Are you remembering to look up?

We’ve spent the last couple of weeks moving back into the greenhouse; a touch of frost fell this past Saturday morning; and we’re mentally preparing to take the gardens apart this week to make way for tulips. But the season isn’t over. There are a few plants that only just got started and I think they were totally worth the wait. Pineapple sage (Salvia elegans) came back as robust green mounds of sweetly fragrant but otherwise blah foliage until finally deciding to bloom its heart out. It’s really too bad the hummingbirds missed this one. Trumpet spurflower too (Rabdosia longituba) was pretty boring looking until the muppet-lipped cobalt-blue water droplets finally appeared and I’m only sorry that anyone who chooses to visit other times of year instead of right now misses its magic.

Nobody ever minds waiting for mums. I don’t think ‘Sheffield Pink’ would be as pretty without a backdrop of fall color, in this case the dawn redwood hedge beginning to color up. And of course asters. But we have been frustrated enough by their tardiness – and in some cases, the enormous mass of their plain foliage through the summer – that we moved most out the North Garden where they also always got in the way of our fall game of musical perennials. But the bees love them so here they are (I believe this one is ‘October Skies’) in the Display Garden instead.

Plectranthus ciliatus is interesting enough pre-bloom with its army-green, purple backed leaves and stems that the glowing lavender flowers are like icing. And speaking of icing: Orostachys iwarenge. Nothing is cuter in or out of bloom.

It’s hard enough to take apart gardens that are still in bloom – dahlias, nicotiana, amaranth, African blue basil, tassel flower, coreopsis and a truckload of other things are in bloom still or all over again in the Cutting Garden, slated for pitching tomorrow – that if we didn’t have a few true late bloomers tucked in strategic places where they won’t need to be disturbed, I’d be heartsick.

What’s blooming new or still or again in your garden? For an inspirational look at October blooms every-which-where, head over to Garden Bloggers Bloom Day at May Dreams Gardens.

Last Friday, after a mostly rainy-drizzly week, Gail and I spent part of a fog-burnt morning surfing the interwebs in the Display Garden. I know spiders are busy this time of year because I have peeled their webs off my face and out of my hair, but as the dewy network was illuminated, it was plain to see that no plant, no span, no airwave is left untraveled. Amazing.

(Click on pictures for a better view.)

Can you see – or feel – the spidery activity in your garden?

Even after so many years gardening (how many? I’m much too young to say 20+) it still feels counter intuitive to transplant in the fall. Maybe it’s because I love the fall garden and don’t want to disrupt it. It’s also so full and lush that it isn’t always obvious where one plant ends and another begins. Where to dig? The only plants I don’t have to question and won’t miss in the fall display are peonies. (And come to think of it, maybe iris and every other spring bloomer…) Peony foliage always looks especially terrible by now though (that said, the new intersectional peonies still look great) and I’m all for cutting it back even if that means leaving a gaping hole. And I certainly can’t imagine moving them in the spring when their new foliage unfurls like fragile baby chicken fingers. They’d survive transplant then – they’re made of tough stuff after all, but they’d resent it and so would I. Now’s the time.

The peonies in the Rose Garden, planted only 3 years ago, were enormous this year – too big for hoops. And no one but me loved the scraggly weirdo, ‘Alley Cat’ so we put transplanting them on the fall to-do list and got down to it last Thursday.

Anyway, out they came and in they went into the Cutting Garden peony row where I will still be able to enjoy old ‘Alley Cat’ and maybe no one else will notice them and ask with a curled lip, “Is that what it’s supposed to look like?!” I’ll miss that question because it always made me laugh… And they’re all ready to go for next year. Their eyes have formed and we made sure to plant them within 1-2″ of the surface so they’ll bloom away come spring. (Eyes down too deep won’t bother bud up.)

I think it was a perfect way to start the fall planting season. I seem to need to ease into it unlike in spring when I’m raring to go. But we won’t actually start playing musical perennials until after the mansion closes Columbus Day weekend, and the last wedding is held, and we’ll shoot to be done by the end of the month because then we’ll have a few hundred bulbs to plant.

Have you started transplanting yet? Did you, or will you move peonies now too?