This October has felt, and until recently, looked, more like late spring.  Our pale pink climbing roses usually bloom sparingly after their all-out blast in May.  But this year, while the foliage is yellowing and fat red rose hips are plentiful, the flowers continue to pop.     

It’s odd to see pink rosebuds intermingling with ripening Nandina berries.

Along the fenceline, our red roses are far more plentiful than is typical for late October. 

The deep velvety red of this petunia contrasts sharply with its dry brown foliage. 

These candy-striped and purple petunias endure while their leaves wither.

Even our lilac has been confused.    

I’m reminded of the unseasonably warm year I spent in England during grad school, when I noted with wonder that the roses slowed their blooming as winter approached, but never stopped. 

And I think of Keats’s ode, To Autumn, that season of mists and mellow fruitfulness:

. . .how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run:

To bend with apples the mossed cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease.