We set aside other things that had to be done yesterday in view of the weather that presented itself; obviously we're in an Indian Summer spate of days, and we felt it best to take full advantage of the opportunity to complete our garden clean-up for the season rather than delay it and tend to the job when the weather turns cold and mean.  Freezing hands, working in the gardens on inclement days is something we did often enough in the past.

While weather is warm and balmy, the sun out, it hardly seems fit to tear up the last of the annuals, cut back still-blooming perennials, set about emptying all the garden pots of their soil, into the gardens themselves, and empty the composters of their finished product to enrich the garden soil.  But that is exactly what we set about doing yesterday, working for hours, enjoying being out, and steadily prepared the garden for its long winter sleep.

Cutting back peonies, hostas, roses, ligularia, hydrangeas, lilies, irises and geraniums to name a few of the perennials that were readied for bitterly cold weather when the soil goes into its deep-down freezeup and everything will be covered with thick layers of snow and ice.  All the detritus was gathered into large compost bags, including rakings of pine needles from the lawn.

The final step was to rake and sweep the patios of their acquired accumulation of leaves from the ornamental trees stricken by freezing nights.  And everything has been transformed, the colour drained from the micro landscape with the absence of flowers, the removal of the garden pots for storage under the deck, the cut-back of all our favourite perennials.

Neat, tidy, and now held in winter-inspired abeyance.  I managed to plant several dozen tulip bulbs before my energy level gave out, and we prepared ourselves for the relaxation of a long ravine walk  to take full advantage of the weather in mid-afternoon.  And it was a glorious walk, full of the pleasure of seeing the transformation of deciduous trees not yet devoid of their bright fall leaves.