It feels like the pendulum has paused exactly mid-swing, balanced between seasons, temperature extremes, and in the high blue sky between dewy mornings and golden afternoons. Right here, right now, everything, except maybe my raging allergies, feels like bliss.

In time with the Autumnal equinox, we too are poised right at the edge of thinking about fall and all of that season’s associated to-dos. There’s always a list of plants to move from one garden to another. — We call it “musical perennials” and do much more of that in the spring, but have already started reorganizing a couple of particularly challenging areas down in the Rock Garden. We have been doing a lot of thinking and planning for next year’s gardens and have filled the cutting bench with rows of tips from tender perennials we want to reuse next year. We’re also getting ready to start thinking about moving back into the greenhouse — nights this week dipped a couple of times into the 40s and we took our chances leaving some of the more fragile tropicals out. (They’re fine.) But before we can move in, we have to let go of the 4 o’clocks and globe amaranth that seeded themselves in the floor and do some grooming of container plants — always much easier to do outside than in, unless of course it’s raining.

And in the meantime, in this perfect moment between seasons, we are holding all of those thoughts and spending plenty of time soaking in the moment and enjoying it all. In between keeping the gardens groomed and paths open we have been captivated by just how beautiful the gardens are. This, truly, is a perfect time to visit. Birds have been very noisy lately and are in and out of the gardens – there are still hummingbirds (I say that every week) and we have been watching flocks of little skippers, as difficult to capture in pictures as the hummingbirds, bouncing from flower to flower. Their hilarity almost makes up for all of the other butterflies we haven’t seen as much of lately. (Wait – are skippers moths or butterflies?) And maybe I’m looking forward to Halloween because I have been particularly enjoying the candy scents of Chocolate cosmos (Cosmos astrosanguineus) and Cimicifuga ‘Hillside Black Beauty’, which after 2 years in the North Garden is finally becoming established enough to flower. (It smells just like Skittles to me. Or is it more like Sweetarts?…)

How are you spending your Autumnal equinox? Does it feel perfectly, blissfully balanced to you too?