Most people consider spring the season of renewal, but I’ve always considered autumn the season that the red carpet is rolled out for better things to come. This is especially true in the garden. Fall is the time to prepare the dirt, put to rest last garden season’s blunders and build on past successes. The garden is one of the few places that you can start over or improve on what you have, to create something extraordinary in the years to come. Fall gives us an opportunity to lay the dirt (or what I consider the ‘red carpet’) and prepare to welcome spring in a grand, blooming fashion.

In West Michigan, the air is crisp, the leaves have turned pretty shades of red, gold and orange and many trees have lost their leaves to reveal beautiful twists of woody branches. My sweaters, jeans and boots have made their way out of the back of my closet and a fresh shipment of bulbs have arrived from Longfield Gardens! I still have some clean up to do in my garden & landscape, but opening up that box of bulbs is more exciting for me than Christmas morning is for my children.

I’ve been wondering what to do with those overgrown raspberry bushes since August, but I’ll worry about that in the spring when my tulip blooms motivate me to work on those summer shrubs. In the meantime, I have some happy digging to do.