A few days ago, the feature on my blog which sends emails to subscribers to alert them to a new post went haywire.  Subscribers were getting emails every few hours, most of which were for posts I had written years ago.  I was appalled.  People who subscribed to Dirt Simple were getting spammed.  The blog had suddenly gotten a life of its own, and was clogging up innocent inboxes all over the place.  I apologize for the nuisance-truly.  Debbie Saro, from Web Savvy Marketing,  keeps a close watch on all of my wordpress websites.  She knew there was a problem long before I got the message from Buck, and wrote to her.  She deactivated that portion of the blog immediately, and let WordPress know they had a problem that needed fixing.  Astonishingly enough, readers responded favorably to all those emails.  I had no complaints.  I had lots and lots of readers reading those multiple posts.

It happens all the time.  Something in one’s life gets a life of its own, and all one can do is bring up the rear. Our past summer was cold and rainy.  I had no say in that decision.  Coping with the fallout fell to me.  My wishes for stellar summer weather-just wishing.  Nature, who most definitely has a life of her own, batted last- as usual.   In mid November of this past year, Mother Nature decided to get sudden and serious about winter.  By late November, we were chopping frozen soil out of pots in order to do the winter arrangements.  We had no warning, nor did we have a grace period.  One day all was well.  The next day, we had trouble.  I was irritated, but I wasn’t waving flags, writing letters, or sounding off on the radio.  Why not?  Every living thing-and this includes nature-is entitled to a life of their own.

Landscape design is work that I do based on the parameters set by the client, the parameters set by the site, and then there is nature.  The drawing that I present to a client is not the beginning and the end.  It may look like a document, but it is in fact a description of a big fluid situation.  It is an invitation to interact.  Plenty of times I have visited a site after I have drawn a design, and gotten back talk.  I may call it back talk, but I know better. Any client has a life all their own.  Any property has a life all its own.  If I am confident, I will let anything pertinent to the design have their moment to speak back.  Listening to what gets spoken back will greatly inform your design. My advice?  Listen. Have you not had plants that let you know they are not happy where they are planted?  Plants have a life of their own.  On a good day, I am tuned in to what they see as a life of their own.  On a worse day, I am moving plants around.

Just like you, I have a life of my own.  I may tag along, or I may insist on forging my own way.  I like having freedom of expression.  If you are a subscriber who was annoyed about WordPress going rogue, I am sorry.  Given how many of you subscribers read multiple old posts over the past few days, I may repost some old essays this winter.  Who’s to say WordPress cannot have a life of its own now and then.  The now and then is over-for now.  Whew!

I will confess that I look forward to Halloween. Though it is first and foremost a low budget fright night celebrating demons, devils, and the walking dead, it is also a garden party.  The worst horror for me-after the harvest, the garden season is done until next year.  Halloween, by contrast, is an angst free celebration of the coming of the dark time.  Though no childhood celebration of Halloween of mine was complete without carved and lighted pumpkins, every year I consider foregoing this ritual.  The pumpkins are incredibly heavy.  Gutting them is a messy and slimy affair.  The carving takes more time than you think.  No one lights pumpkins for a week or two-it is a one night delight.  Are you in?

Yes, every year I relent.  I carve pumpkins.   Prielipp Farms at my local farmer’s market has someone load my choice of carving pumpkins into my car-they are really swell about this.  Rob carts them from the suburban to my workroom.  There they are, looking at me.  My carved pumpkins come last-after I carve them for clients. So they day before Halloween, I have 6 pumpkins to carve.

I have no use for patterns.  What fun is that, to follow a pattern that someone else has imagined? I make a few marks on the surface with a marker, and get cutting.  Every pumpkin carving evolves from the first cut to the finish.  Like most other garden projects, one move suggest another.  A big idea sketched out, a plan for the placement of walkways, porches and trees will eventually come down to the closing details.  Once a carving begins, all those other issues clamoring for my attention fade away. It’s just me, a vague idea, and a knife.

This pumpkin carving began with a drill-and ends up looking like it was drilled.  It may be a foolish pleasure, but I highly recommend carving pumpkins for Halloween.  It is the last event of the fall.  How I enjoy it.  Enjoyment of the garden is rarely an academic exercise.  It is a shockingly sensory loaded enjoyment of nature, in all of its forms.  The sound of wind or the cicadas, the smell of the roses, the sounds of the birds, the tulips opening the first really warm day of spring, watching the Boston Ivy change color, the geese flying south, cutting the lids off the pumpkins-I call this experiential and primary source material for a life appreciative of nature.  Halloween is just the right dose of mock horror I need at the end of the season.

I do get lots of visitors on Halloween.  I want to make it worth the while of the both of us.  Once my carved pumpkins were set, I was pleased.  I had company coming.

Our Halloween was perfect.  Rainy and ominously windy.  I only worried for a moment that no one would come.  Of course they would come.  Halloween is but one night every year.  And come they did.

I was so worried that my votive candles in my pumpkins would blow out, considering the gusty winds and rains.  Rob sent me home with 6 Belgian made candles whose claim to fame is their willingness to burn in adverse conditions.  The wind does not blow these candles out.  These candles not only stayed lit in the wind and rain, they blackened the insides of the pumpkins-to great effect, I might add.

Early in the evening, I could see that my pumpkins were cooking, given the strength of the Belgian candles.  At my request, Buck vented all of the pumpkin lids with florists picks.  Who knew those Belgian candles would provide another dimension to my Halloween garden!  The carved pumpkins promptly blackened-this was a horrifying event I had not anticipated.  The smell was rather delicious, and the steam rising was dramatic.  I was scrambling to make sure they wouldn’t collapse before the end of the evening.

Trick or treaters coming up my walk were treated to the smell of cooking pumpkin, and the visual experience of superheated pumpkin in the rain steaming from every cut.  Rob and I spent some time observing the scene from the sidewalk.  Every little visitor was talking about the pumpkins.  Which one they liked the best. There were lots of questions at the door about who carved them.

My garden design life is a serious life.  I see it that way.  But there are those moments in the garden that are memorably and simply great fun.  I suspect that I enjoyed my Halloween at least as much as my guests.

The only time I see this group of kids who live in my neighborhood is Halloween night.  They don’t have an appreciation of my yellow magnolias, or the shapes of my boxwood.  But they do respond to what I have carved from the fruits of the harvest.  Every one of them says thanks.  The very youngest children say thanks too, prompted by the parents accompanying them.

The hauling and heaving around of my big pumpkins in the process of carving them-it took its toll.  I have the old lady backache, and my hands are still sore.  So be it.  This Halloween was more fun than I bargained for.

The garden’s most memorable moments seem to revolve around that surprise I did not see coming.

Once it was dark, these faces took on another dimension, given the interaction of rain, wind, and fire.

This Halloween visitor could not have been more than 3 feet tall.  I would guess he was 9 years old.  His costume- sensational.  We were all having fun.

All of the pictures in this post came from companies in the US and Canada that grow peonies for sale.  Interested in adding some to your garden?  My local nurseries sell well rooted peonies in pots in the spring, but if you are interested in a specific cultivar, you may need to order from a peony grower for a bare root fall delivery.Either next spring, or the year after, or in my next life, I will have the chance to design a landscape around a collection of peonies. I have time.

Those nurseries that specialize in growing peonies for sale-support them.  Buy some. A gardening world without peonies-dreary.  The peonies blooming-so glorious.

This picture was taken at Martha Stewart’s peony garden, and posted on her blog.  Truly beautiful.

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