The tall asters, now known as Symphyotrichum, will be finished with their impressive run by a week from now, leaving only some of their smaller cousins to carry on the garden show. The fall-blooming colchicums will also have finished their day in the sun, leaving only a few fading petals on the ground to show that they ever bloomed. Next spring I will see their foliage and remember—once again—that flowers and foliage are separate events in some species. With ivy-leafed cyclamen (Cyclamen hederifolium), both blooms (which appear in fall) and leaves (spring) are beautiful. Colchicums are a different story, with coarse, strappy leaves that you would just as soon forget about.
Though the roses are still blooming fitfully, the number of flowers in the garden is diminishing. I am glad for the hardy chrysanthemums, which will open in two weeks or so. I have some that are five years old and enormous, sprawling over as much as five or six square feet. The blooms are not as puffy as those on the forced and manicured specimens available at every retailer, but they are plentiful and the flowering period is long. Some years there are even a few left for the Thanksgiving centerpiece.