A November Morning in the Garden - Eleanor Perenyi

My favorite garden writer, Eleanor Perenyi, wrote one garden book, Green Thoughts, and it affected me immeasurably when I first read it in 1982.  I thought how marvelous that she could combine great writing with the mundane joys of a Northeast garden. 

She refers to chestnuts and it makes me wonder if she had a tree because  the once plentiful native chestnut trees are gone, killed by the devastating fungal disease, chestnut blight. (Although they have a foundation, go here: The American Chestnut Foundation.) 

Here is a paragraph from her essay, Autumn. It catches that early morning moment in a late November garden:

"Heavier dews presage the morning when the moisture will have turned to ice, glazing the shriveled dahlias and lima beans, and the annuals will be blasted beyond recall. These deaths are stingless. I wouldn't want it otherwise. 

I gardened one year in a tropical country and found that eternal bloom led to ennui. Up here I bury my bulbs in the same spirit that the squirrel, my enemy, goes about his work. He will find the chestnuts he has hidden in the rose garden when he needs them (so will I when they sprout next spring), and my bulbs will come up in due course. "