After September’s property disappointment, we have greatly retooled our winter plans - really, all of our plans.

I take the model of perennial plants and even shrubs as the garden’s “backbone” with pockets of annual planting that must be “flipped’ multiple times a year.

We have casually watched the property market in our area for a few years now, but after losing an offer on a 20-acre property, we have been haunting the real estate sites daily.

The garden is tired, too. I’d like to think that we’re sympatico: two weary travelers, ready for a long winter’s nap.

August 2020, in which the lady ventures back out into the garden and confronts the result of neglecting it for much of the summer.

It’s about this time every year that I vow to move North at the earliest possible opportunity.

It feels like not a lot newsworthy happened in the garden, but sometimes that’s just as much worth noting as the dramatic stuff.

Compared to the big push of April, May was a pretty light month for garden tasks. It rained, and rained, and rained.

An idea that has always inspired us, especially in moving into an older home (ours is 1951) where so, so many things need work and nothing is quite pristine, is that if it’s good enough for a cottage in the English countryside, it’s good enough for us.