As much as I love the freshness of a June garden, September is my favorite month. Some visitors seem surprised that we “still” have so much color but I can’t imagine it any other way. The gentle light and the beautiful cool blue days demand that we be outside reveling in exuberant color. We definitely plan for this time of year (in truth, for the whole summer into fall season) to be stupendous but it doesn’t take much – a few annuals like zinnias, ageratum, and alyssum; and a handful of tender perennials like dahlias, salvias, angelonia, and plectranthus and you’re golden. Or the garden is in any case, especially in the slanted light of September. Even with roses, delphinium, asters, and euphorbia (re)blooming in the Rose Garden, it wouldn’t be nearly as spectacular without the annuals and tender perennials giving them a boost. I know a lot of gardeners choose not to buy plants that won’t survive the winter outside but I think those plants are worth every penny (and seed annuals like zinnias really do just cost pennies) because they’re the ones that carry the garden so effortlessly past its usual early summer peak well into the prettiest months of all.

And of course, some of them can survive the winter and carry whatever we spent on them into the next season too (and the next after that and the next…) We’ve started taking cuttings of some of our favorites like porterweed (Stachytarpheta mutabilis), cigar plant (Cuphea spp.) and heliotrope. We’re lucky to have the greenhouse for overwintering them but sunny windowsills would work too.

Is your garden as colorful as you’d like it to be this month? Do you use annuals and tender perennials too or do rely on late-blooming hardy perennials and shrubs? For a look at a whole world of colorful September blooms, check out May Dreams Gardens Garden Bloggers Bloom Day (September 15).

Just in time for winter to finally look and feel more like a proper winter, Gail and I are sliding headfirst towards spring. We started the new year by looking through magazine back issues for inspiration. (Do you do that too? It’s as if I never saw them before – and in some cases I hadn’t. Who has time to read anything in May and June – or October for that matter?) And in the last couple of weeks we’ve moved along to seed catalogs. At first it seemed like there was nothing new and then suddenly everything old was new again and everything forgotten was remembered fondly and wanted desperately. The more we go through the catalogs making choices, the more our momentum and excitement builds, so much that it’s hard to know when to quit.

Same thing with taking cuttings – but then I always have a hard time not taking more than we need if there are more to take. I started whacking back the scented geraniums (Pelargonium, that is) yesterday and it’s a good thing we have a plan for these next year, because we’ll have plenty of plants now thanks to me being obsessive about sticking every possible cutting.

Pelargonium are so easy to root and now is a fine time if you haven’t cut yours back yet. Take the growing tips and prepare them by cutting below the second or third leaf node from the tip. Cut that leaf off right at the stem and then place the cutting end-out of a plastic bag for a day. They root more reliably if the wound has a chance to callous first. Once the cut looks dry and slightly crusted, dust or dip it in rooting hormone and stick in dampened perlite, vermiculite or sand – whatever you like to use for rooting. If the remaining leaves are large, cut them in half to reduce transpiration. Keep them out of direct sun and the  medium from drying out. A few weeks waiting should do the trick.

Are you sliding down a slippery slope to spring too? Are you ordering more seeds or taking more cuttings yet than you have room for?

Last but never least, are the little things I love. You know I am all for outstanding plants – I always have to grow a few big ones that grab attention and don’t let it go for a minute. Fuller’s teasel, castor beans, and my very favorite 6 footer, Gomphocarpus physocarpus ‘Oscar’ (aka hairy balls) should be high on my list because they simply can’t be overlooked.

But flower-an-hour (Hibiscus trionum) can. I know I’ve mentioned it already this year (last year) but I still can’t believe I let this one pass under my radar for so long. This past summer I discovered a love for the way it weaves itself into the August garden here and there and pops open its flowers as if it doesn’t matter who sees how delicate their creamy white flowers are, and how deep their purple throat. But even if I might miss them, the bees never do.

I’m not usually that into purple flowers (or white ones for that matter) but my other diminutive favorite was Cuphea ‘Ballistic’. The ears! We’ve grown C. ‘David Verity’ from cuttings for years and can’t live without it; and we’re becoming just as addicted to ‘Carribean Sunset’ and Mexican giant cigar plant (C. micropetala) – so smitten with that one in fact that despite it nearly breaking our backs we brought our largest specimen back into the greenhouse. But honestly, it’s little ‘Ballistic’ that just gets me. Typical of cuphea, once it starts blooming it never stops and never needs deadheading either.

And what about the plants that would just as soon be walked on as noticed? Gail and I are both consumed with the notion of lawn alternatives and hoping to replace our own sorry looking lawns with anything that won’t waste endless resources – and doesn’t need weekly mowing. My kingdom for a carpet of chamomile underfoot…

Meanwhile, as I look back and we begin to cast forward to next season’s gardens, the eyelash begonias are beginning to bloom, and the maidenhair ferns are sprouting. I simply can’t help focusing on the littlest things.

What little things are you in love with?

While the weather is still so mild and the nights still so warm, it feels decidedly premature to bring plants back into the greenhouse. I’d much rather keep enjoying all the color out in the garden. (So much color!) But the time is absolutely right. It’s much easier on the plants if they come in with enough time to acclimatize before we close the vents and turn the heat back on. – That’s particularly important for houseplants and advice I really should be following at home, come to think of it…

Over the last few days we have brought cart load after heavy-back-breaking cartload of container plants back inside along with dozens of tender perennial stock plants. We’ve pushed aside the office supplies and made a colossal mess of the potting shed – it’s always gratifying to use this room (where I sit as I type surrounded by muddy tracks of potting soil) for its primary purpose – and it’s been amazing to watch the greenhouse transform from an airy bare-bones space back into a garden. (Click on pictures for larger view.)

Our one consolation for losing the plants in the (outside) garden is that they all look just as beautiful inside. Actually, there’s something about bringing plants indoors that makes them seem extra precious and lovely somehow. So lovely in fact that we decided the greenhouse is too nice not to linger in. We hope we will still have room for the livingroom ensemble after our collection of phormiums comes inside…

Have you started bringing the garden back inside?

Garden Bloggers Bloom Day (hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens) is the best excuse I can think of to show off some of my favorite weirdos. I know my cup of tea isn’t to everyone’s taste. For one thing, I tend to gravitate towards anything with nearly invisible green flowers like crazy-cool petal-less Boltonia ‘Nallie’s Lime Dot’ (below). It comes into bloom-ish in early September and is supposed to be about 4′ tall. Ours grew taller and then probably because it was shaded by our new dawn redwood hedge, flopped right over to hang with an aster. It holds up really well in arrangements so I’ll probably vote to move to a sunnier spot in the cutting garden. I also adore little Nicotiana ‘Delaware Indian Sacred’ (right) obviously because it’s green but also because it seeds itself around and is in bloom in one place or another all season long.

And ’tis the season to love the seedheads. They may look gone-by to some but I prefer the black knobs of rudbeckia sans petals. And aren’t teasel and cardoon at any stage wildly wonderful?

There’s probably nothing weirder than Amaranthus ‘Dreadlocks’ full stop.

And every late-summer/fall I rediscover cuphea. (Who doesn’t?) Suddenly though I’m head-over-heels for a cuphea that probably nobody else here has noticed.  Cuphea ‘Ballistic’ is a tiny little plant with mouse faces that ended up tucked under a whole bunch of other stuff (mostly other cupheas) in the kid’s bed. I vow to put them somewhere front and center next year and took a bunch of cuttings yesterday for insurance.

Speaking of taking cuttings, the speed of the season took us by surprise. (How did it get to be mid-September already?!) We usually start taking cuttings in late August/early September but have only now begun in earnest. If the same thing happened to you and those beautiful cut-able tips that emerge in late summer have since grown and flowered, cut your plants back in a few places to encourage new growth and check again in a couple of weeks.

What’s weird or wonderful in your garden right now? When did you start taking cuttings?