We cherish these closing days of a fall-extended gardening season. The only 'gardening' part of things at this late stage unfortunately, is undoing by and large, what we had truly turned our anticipatory attention to in gardening in early spring and beyond. In short, both thought and action revolves around deconstructing the garden we worked so assiduously to create, and which has given us so much pleasure over the months of May to September.

Now that we've entered October and the weather has become seriously cold and windier with fewer sunny days, the garden has been eclipsed, but this is a decline that has long been in the making. The fact is that gardens are hard workers and do their best to satisfy the person who spends hours tweaking and treating, tidying and encouraging it to produce the most foliage and flowers that can be coaxed from a willing and well-fed, contented plant.

Because we have a very small space in which to grow vegetation of any kind, and that limits the size of our garden beds and borders and this is a garden three decades in the making, we have quite a few ornamental trees and perennial shrubs, so there isn't much space to grow colourful annuals. Much of the colour comes seasonally from roses, lilies, irises, peonies, hydrangeas, hostas, and old standbys such as Canterbury bells, mountain bluet, poppies and black-eyed Susans, Ladies Mantle, coneflowers and Morning Glories. Not a complete list by any means.

And then we introduce colourful flowering plants like begonias, petunias, canna and calla lilies, marigolds and other climate-sensitive plants that offer us their form, texture and lovely colour throughout the growing season. Some, like the begonias and petunias, marigolds and zinnias and impatiens never stop blooming, luxuriating in rain and sun and producing an ever-larger presence.

Our two little dogs are preferably kept in the house while gardening is in session, although it may seem often that Jackie has pretensions to becoming an accomplished assistant-in-waiting, it is only his natural curiosity and his fixated devotion to my presence that makes it appear as though he is my apprentice.

The garden has given us immense pleasure, delighting us with its evolving presence throughout the growing season, producing pride and appreciation from us that we can look out our front door at any time and be constantly surprised by the beauty that lies before us. The trees that are planted here and there give us privacy from the road while highlighting the architecture of the garden. Any time we glance out a window, the vibrant tones of flowering plants amidst a sea of green greets us, and we are happily content.

Now, however, it must be disassembled. The varied and many garden pots emptied of their contents. Some have already on their own initiative begun the process, as annuals have begun to die back, accustomed to ideal growing conditions which have been gradually withdrawn with the change in weather. Begonia bulbs can be preserved overwinter in the house basement to be re-used again the coming spring, but most everything else other than the canna and calla roots will be composted.

And then we will look out on a bleak, colour-deprived landscape for October and November. Until the arrival of December and a gradually increasing blanket of snow puts the garden to sleep until April.  We may be glad that all the work of cutting back perennial vegetation in preparation for winter will have been done, the capacious garden pots emptied of their soil, everything appearing neat and tidy has been executed, but we will sorely miss the extravaganza of colour and form that a well-loved garden provides.