It was 28F at 7 AM this Saturday morning. I couldn’t see any frost when I first looked out the window into the predawn twilight, but soon enough, as the sun came up, I recognized the familiar sparkling of tiny ice crystals on the grass and the Lantana. This was our first frost of autumn.

Coastal Virginia, as usual, enjoys much milder weather than our neighbors to the north and west shoveling snow and those to the south managing other unpleasant meteorological circumstances. It has been fairly mild and calm here, even as the land and water cool in anticipation of winter. It has been a slow unwinding as the wheel of the year turns towards winter. I can’t recall another year when we didn’t have even a hint of frost before the last day of November.

We have spent much of this week preparing for the cold that has been sweeping down from the north. We knew what was coming. We had a hard deadline for bringing in every last tender plant we could save and for sealing up the house. There are always more plants than space and I was happy to give a few containers with Begonias to a new neighbor who has some sunny windows and a love for flowering Begonias. I also cut a second vase full of dragon wing Begonia stems on Thursday afternoon, and brought in a final few pots from the deck on Friday morning. It is amazing what one can find room for when one tries to save a plant!

But our tender Begonias and Aroids that must come inside each autumn are really only a small fraction of our plants in cultivation, and there is also work to do with those that will remain outside through the winter. We did some work to restore a planting bed several years old now that has eroded quite a bit. It is one of those areas where it is hard for things we plant to thrive. A Rhododendron is grazed every year, yet lives on. The Hellebores I added last year are beginning to take off and should bloom this year. We topped it off with good compost and fine bark mulch before planting a few evergreen ferns. This area has been regularly sprouting volunteer sporelings in recent years and we want to encourage the ferns to take this area, if they will.

I finally planted some Japanese holly ferns, Christmas ferns, and Korean tassel ferns I have been holding in their nursery pots during our dry autumn. It made me very happy to get these out into where they will grow before the first frost. The rest, still waiting to be planted out, are snuggled into a sheltered place under the deck until the weather warms a bit next week.

Learning my lesson by losing a few Adiantums last winter, I also moved our potted ones into shelter on the front patio where they will have gentler winter. Hardy to Zone 7, we lost some of our A. capillus-veneris and/or hybrid A. x mairisii last winter. These are so pretty, I hope to keep them going so they will continue to grow larger next year.

When I finally ventured outside to see how the garden responded to the first frost of the year, I was so pleased to see that it did little noticeable damage. The timing and morning sun converged to spare those few tender plants left outside. A Mandevilla vine still blooms in the shelter of the front patio, and our rosy geraniums remain full of blossoms.

But it is time to turn our attention inwards, growing Amaryllis for the holidays and enjoying the pretty Christmas Cactus a friend dropped by. This has been a very challenging year in our garden, full of lessons to contemplate over the winter.

I find comfort in the words of Marcus Aurelius, who reminds us to concentrate on those things in our control and let go of worry about things outside of our direct control, like climate change and disruptive weather patterns. Perhaps the stoic philosophers are wiser than we realize, reminding us to create our own ‘weather’ by curating our thoughts carefully, focusing on what is good and loving. Those things that we encourage with our focus and attention grow ever larger in our lives. And the only moment over which we have any control at all is the eternal ‘now.’

“Observe always that everything is the result of change, and get used to thinking that there is nothing Nature loves so well as to change existing forms and make new ones like them.”

Marcus Aurelius

With appreciation to Jim Stephens of Garden Ruminations, who

hosts Six on Saturday each week.