Between the forty five degree mornings and the eighty degree afternoons, I don't know if I'm coming of going anymore. So much so that I had to look at the calendar to remember it is almost time to plant spring bulbs. Or not.
Good gardening practice advises to plant them after October 15, but if it's still warm they get confused and I don't want a garden full of tulips at the end of November. I guess I'll wait a little longer to plant them, I doubt the soil is going to freeze any time soon.
Meanwhile, the garden looks like this: summer annuals in bloom among dried leaves, in bright sunshine. Too warm, too dry, too cold, too wet, too much. They don't care! It's fall, I think, at least that's what the calendar says, as opal basil displays its second flush of bloom, next to the catmint.
Relentless nicotiana from three years ago decided to germinate at the end of summer and is now flaunting broad foliage. By the way, if you consider planting this germination maven, run fast in the opposite direction: weeds have nothing on this plant!
Otherwise everything seems kind of random, the leadwort bloomed early, the cosmos bloomed late, only the sedum stuck to its schedule, to make everything else seem even more out of sequence.

Author's Bio: 

Main Areas: Garden Writing; Sustainable Gardening; Homegrown Harvest
Published Books: “Terra Two”; “Generations”; "Letters to Lelia"; "Fair"; "The Plant - A Steampunk Story"
Career Focus: Author; Consummate Gardener;
Affiliation: All Year Garden; The Weekly Gardener; Francis Rosenfeld's Blog

I started learning about gardening from my grandfather, at the age of four. Despite his forty years' experience as a natural sciences teacher, mine wasn't a structured instruction, I just followed him around, constantly asking questions, and he built up on the concepts with each answer.

I started blogging in 2010 to honor his memory and share the joy of growing all things green and the beauty of the garden through the seasons. Two garden blogs were born this way: allyeargarden.com and theweeklygardener.com, a periodical that followed it one year later. I wanted to assemble an informal compendium of the things I learned from him, wonderful books, educational websites, and my own experience, in the hope that other people might find it useful it in their own gardening practice.