Every day now I go out in the garden for at least a few minutes.  I weed and trim as I plant bulbs, and when I want to do something dramatic, I rake up a big bag of fallen leaves.  Three weeks after the official "first frost date" for our area, we are still waiting to wake up one morning and see our lawns and gardens rimed with frost.

In the meantime, the soil is cooling, but I am amazed at how much life is still going strong.  The onion grass hasn't gotten the word about the onrush of winter, and neither have the infinitely more desirable columbines.  Their leaves, untroubled by leaf miners this year, are fresh and green.  The self-sown foxgloves that litter all the back beds get bigger and more numerous every day.  I have trimmed the dead flower stalks off the big Hosta plantaginea or fragrant August lilies.  Their end-of-summer perfume is just a memory now, but most of the leaves are intact and only just starting to turn golden brown around the edges. 

The damask-like patterned leaves of the little hardy cyclamen or Cyclamen hederifolium have come up on one side of the ornamental wishing well in the shady part of the back garden.  I had forgotten all about these plants until the pink flowers emerged from the ground at the beginning of fall.  Now that the leaves are out, I am determined to buy more of them next spring.  Hardy cyclamen don't shout their name like roses or peonies, they simply sing sweetly from a protected corner of the garden.  Once you have heard their song, it's hard not to fall in love with it.

When I am down on my knees planting tulips and miniature iris, I can smell the sweet fragrance of the earth.  The fall garden--damp, cool and sleepy--is still full of possibilities.