Yesterday was the kind of day that made me feel very sorry for anyone stuck indoors. High 60s, sunny blue sky, birds singing, bees buzzing: Exactly the kind of short-sleeves day we all desperately crave when it’s hot as blazes or when it’s bone-chilling cold out. Exactly the kind of day best spent soaking up the warmth of the sun, sucking up the scent of the fragrant honeysuckle (Lonicera fragrantissima), and getting the garden cut back, and roses pruned and transplanted. Which is exactly how Gail, Tricia — our new garden intern, and I spent our day.

Your employer should thank me for suggesting that the very next time a day like that is forecast for a work day (tomorrow by the looks of it), you call in well and get your body outside. Disregard the calendar, quit worrying too much about the pendulum swinging, and cut back the buddleia, lespedeza and caryopteris. Go for it. It’s time and it will do you good to get out and enjoy it.

So what will you do on the next blue day? I’ll feel better if you tell me you’ll at least be able to open the windows, and will try to invent excuses, like a friend of mine did yesterday, to take some mini-walks around the neighborhood…

I also think it would be good for you — and good for your garden — to plan on taking another day off on Thursday, April 5 to attend a day of lectures on Planting for the Future by Doug Tallamy, author of Bringing Nature Home, and Warren Leach, brilliant landscape designer and co-owner of Tranquil Lake Nursery. I have heard both of them speak several times and they always keep me at the edge of my seat: Doug with his fervent call to arm our gardens with certain native plants in order to recreate a working ecosystem; and Warren with inspirational design ideas that show that environmentally friendly gardens can still be highly ornamental and sublimely lovely. Please come if you possibly can.

Fall is dragging its feet getting into winter and although some people and plants I know are ready for it to be cold, it couldn’t be a sweeter treat for us gardeners. We’ve been braced for bitter winds and flurries ever since the first frost (which came with bitter winds and flurries) but have been able to leave our coats on hooks and mittens in pockets for weeks now. These last few days especially have been weirdly warm but so perfect for taking in the last of the fall color seemingly stuck in a holding pattern, and catching up on outside work. Gail and I spent most of today picking more veg for the food pantry (lettuce, carrots, spinach, kale and more!) and spent yesterday in the Display Garden tidying up fallen seed heads. We still can’t quite do the final cutback: some of the plants, like nicotiana and a few salvias, haven’t quit blooming yet; others like yarrow and calendula have started up all over again.

The bees are still out foraging and there are great clots of milkweed bugs on the crispy milkweed seedpods (can they still eat the dead tissue or are they just … busy?) and they’re even on nicotiana leaves. Every year we have to look these guys up to see if they’re good, bad or indifferent. They do eat milkweed pods – and maybe nicotiana leaves? – and because of that they themselves are as safe as Monarchs from predation. (Any bird silly enough to eat one will get the throw-ups.) But we only remember spotting them at the end of the season and they don’t seem to do a lot of damage. So we left them and their plants be. The bugs pictured are adults; as instars they are smaller, shiny bright orange-red and wingless. (As always, click the pic to enlarge.)

Despite the bonus of unfrozen days, some creatures don’t seem to be finding what they need to survive winter (if it ever gets here.) Have you noticed an absence of acorns this year? We know that oaks put out extra acorns now and again as a way of insuring that some of them survive to become trees, and Gail and I remember last year as a big acorn year. This year the trees rested apparently and the squirrels are frantic. Good thing we planted tulips… If anyone has a good squirrel pilfer prevention technique to share, please do!

Are you enjoying a few extra days of mild weather too – or do you just think it’s too weird and time for a change?

Don’t tell anyone but I am not a big fan of potted mums. For weeks now they’ve been popping up on doorsteps everywhere and plopped pot-and-all into every other foundation bed, and I can’t help yawning. They’re just so… municipal. Now, you know me – I’m all for whatever gets people buying plants and out in their gardens/yards, but mums? Really? There are so many other things that are more interesting – including …  mums.

Hardy Chrysanthemum – or Dendranthema or whatever the kids are calling them these days – are so much lovelier than the ones that are forced into bloom only to die from neglect or stress a few weeks later. Hardy mums have a looser more graceful form – extra loose if we forget to cut them back in June – and they live for practically ever and tend to be generous spreaders. Sheffield Pink is our grandmotherly favorite, spread along the edge under the dawn redwood hedge in the Display Garden and borrowed with something blue in the Rose Garden. I don’t know and haven’t been able to find the name of the sweet yellow and red one in the Rock Garden. Anyone recognize it?

It should be noted that some of the potted mums for sale are hardy mums in disguise. Neither Gail nor I remember planting the deep-pink mum in the North Garden and have credited a wedding decorator. (We toast the happy couple every fall.) Over the last few sunny days, it has been as covered with different species of bees, flies, wasps, etc as any aster. And that right there is reason enough to plant the hardy mums – they’re a great late meal for pollinators.

Potted mums have become part of people’s -non gardeners and gardeners alike – fall tradition but wouldn’t it be great if growers started forcing Cuphea micropetala instead? Aside from being an outstanding tender perennial worthy of a position in the garden from June on, the late summer-into-fall flowers look just like candy corn. And I know at least one nursery owner who puts luminous Plectranthus ciliata on display in the fall. I’m sold. How about you? Do you buy potted mums or have you made another late-fall flower part of your garden’s tradition?