We have sure had weather lately - that terrible flood and then a sudden cold snap! We need to start gathering all garden ornaments that winter will ruin, get all the old pots cleared away and get all those standing in pots in the ground... all the cleanups that we promised ourselves would be done by now.

I long for the bulbs to arrive, for the early autumn chores are melancholy, but the planting of bulbs is the work of hope and is always thrilling.
May Sarton

Gardening is the slowest of the performing arts.
  —Mac Griswold

OK - where's Waldo?

In the garden, Autumn is, indeed the crowning glory of the year, bringing us the fruition of months of thought
and care and toil.  And at no season, save perhaps in Daffodil time, do we get such superb colour effects as
from August to November.
Rose G. Kingsley, The Autumn Garden

There comes a time when it cannot be put off any longer.  The radio warns of a killing frost coming in the night, and you must say good-by to the garden.  You dread it, as you dread saying good-by to any good friend; but the garden waits with its last gifts, and you must go with a bushel basket or big buckets to receive them.
Rachel Peden

When all the cows were sleeping
And the sun had gone to bed,
Up jumped the pumpkin,
And this is what he said:
I'm a dingle dangle pumpkin
With a flippy floppy hat.
I can shake my stem like this,
And shake my vine like that.
When all the hens were roosting
And the moon behind a cloud,
Up jumped the pumpkin
And shouted very loud:
I'm a dingle dangle pumpkin........

You ought to know that October is the first Spring month.
Karel Capek
Perhaps the most famous icon of the holiday is the jack-o-lantern.  Various authorities attribute it to either Scottish or Irish origin.  However, it seems clear that it was used as a lantern by people who traveled the road this night, the scary face to frighten away spirits or faeries who might otherwise lead one astray.  Set on porches and in windows, they cast the same spell of protection over the household.  (The American pumpkin seems to have forever superseded the European gourd as the jack-o-lantern of choice.)  Bobbing for apples may well represent the remnants of a Pagan 'baptism' rite called a 'seining', according to some writers.  The water-filled tub is a latter-day Cauldron of Regeneration, into which the novice's head is immersed.  The fact that the participant in this folk game was usually blindfolded with hands tied behind the back also puts one in mind of a traditional Craft initiation ceremony. Mike Nichols, All Hallow's Eve

For more information, contact: rose@DunwoodyGardenClub.com