We've enjoyed a generous share of sunlit days this fall, so little use complaining that we've also been exposed to night- and day-long events of unrelenting rain. It's not that we've had a little bit of everything, exactly; more like we've had a whole lot of everything. When it's dry and sunny and pleasantly mild out it gives us the opportunity to spend more of our time in the out-of-doors even if that time is significantly consumed with fall's chores tidying up the gardens, cutting back perennials, plucking expired annuals, emptying our many garden pots and urns.

Not everyone does this; some people prefer to just let their gardens be, to go through the winter as they are, in spent disarray, and when spring arrives then pay attention to clearing away the detritus of which there is quite a bit less as decay aids in producing a diminished amount of plant matter to be gathered and composted. I prefer doing all of this in the fall in one fell swoop (one fell swoop, ha! it's an enterprise that takes weeks to accomplish) and then just relax and enjoy the emerging garden on spring's eventual, post-winter arrival.

We're grateful that the garden structure still presents itself even at this late stage in fall's cold, rainy, windy disturbance to all growing things reminding them that the seasons have their own demands, as a landscape to be admired. Although trees and shrubs are now turning various shades of colour as green foliage prepares itself to surrender to winter, they still present as lush and architectural in their various guises in the garden; each plant supporting its neighbours in an admirable orchestration of colour, texture and form.

And when we look out our house windows while incessant rain pelts out of an aquarium-look-alike sky, and view the garden still making a prodigious effort to please us, we are hugely aware of the work that we have ourselves invested in making the garden a comfortable and pleasant place to walk about in, to contemplate, to host birds and butterflies and enrich our lives in the process.