When I am alone in my garden in November I often think about music, especially Ralph Vaughn Williams’ elegiac settings of English folk tunes. My favorite is the haunting “Fantasia on Greensleeves,” because the musical images just seem right for the season of chilly winds, early sunsets and mornings when the grass glistens with frost. “Greensleeves” is about memories, and on the surface the garden has become a repository of memories. Rose hips remind me of all the summer flowers, the piles of brilliant fallen maple leaves take me back to the spring day when I first noticed that the trees were leafing out. The abundant seed pods on the roses of Sharon make me think fondly about how well those shrubs performed this year.
But as I go about the business of planting the last bulbs, raking away the leaves and tidying up, I am struck by the vibrancy all around me. October was wet, and the plants, so parched all summer, have responded vigorously. The columbines, for example, are as fresh and green as they were in May–maybe more so. The scented geraniums are huge. The rosettes on the first-year foxgloves are enormous, and I am positive that they weren’t that way last month. ‘L.D. Braithwaite’, a red rose that I just installed last July, has four big blooms. Many of the other roses are sporting new reddish leaves. ‘Ghislaine de Feligonde’, an old-fashioned shrub rose, has been so busy sprouting new canes that she has not even paused to acknowledge the cooler temperatures. Even as I prune back the butterfly bushes, I see that they are sending out new growth. Tiny larkspur seedlings are coming up all over the back garden, and in front, the pulmonaria are plump and apple green. A few honeysuckle bloom on the old arbor. The big potted canna that sulked all summer like a petulant thirteen-year-old has a flower bud, and the barberry bushes have grown to an indecent size. Even Sarah, the charcoal-gray cat, who has been somnolent for months, is racing around the garden as if she has a firecracker tied to her tail.
So I rake carefully to keep from disturbing the tiny larkspur. I weed. I stifle the urge to defy the season and divide the overgrown ‘Autumn Joy’ sedum. When I see a blossom on any plant, I leave it there or clip it for an indoor bouquet. I don’t worry about the new growth on the roses because I have a sense that the roses know what they are doing.
Of course much of this growth and greenness will come to an end when the hard frosts come in the next few weeks. The still-blooming tuberous begonias will turn black in the cold and the exuberant nasturtiums will die. The cooling soil will turn even colder. Right now, though, it is a joy to be outside because there is so much life under every dead leaf.
I used to think that the best way to get through late fall in the garden was to focus on great expectations and dream about next spring. After all, those bulbs sleeping under the soil are like debutants, indulging in a long bout of beauty rest before the big horticultural coming-out party next spring. Since the party was already arranged, it was easy to dismiss November as a collection of depressing days with nothing to look at except bare branches, wet streets and dead leaves. But now I know better, and my greatest pleasure comes from watching the abundant life and changing scene every day in my beds and borders. Waiting and hoping are good and necessary, but celebrating the here-and-now is even more important, especially as winter looms large on the horizon. You can’t be fully human unless you can see that old age is, in its own way, as vibrant, beautiful and interesting as youth. You can’t be a real gardener until you can celebrate November.