Fall planting has come to a close, more or less; I might be tempted to continue, but it's very dry and I'm worried about watering next summer. And though the garden is particularly accessible now--no mud; sunny--there's not much happening there. I've been working down in the shade garden and the woods below there, pruning, cutting brush, amending soil, but it's pleasant, when I look up from my happy labors, to see the earliest bulbs sprouting, some flowers...not much going on. Very little. Also we have short days and a lot of night, so I have to find other ways to obsess over the garden. Hence online catalogs. I was just looking at the German site www.pflanzenversand-gaissmayer.de, which I found my way to when looking up epimediums. I haven't purchased from them, but, like many German-language sites I visit, they offer excellent cultural information about their plants. I like the German horticultural sensibility: the kinds of plants they offer, their appreciation for natives and once-bloomers. Italy has great Internet sites about native flora, but horticulturally the country seems to me, in spite of pockets of brilliant activity, to be often a day late and a dollar short, while the Germans are on the ball. No doubt there are many individual exceptions, but I've been happy with my experiences ordering from German nurseries, also appreciating their business practices, and intend to continue shopping there. The British are of course past masters of gardening, but prices are high and shipping ridiculous, so forget that. I know German, which helps, to put it mildly. Language barriers are a serious problem.

Anyway, current obsessions follow: bleeding heart (Dicentra spectabilis, though the botanical name has changed), cowslips, Solomon's seal. I have low moist ground with trees and shrubs where these herbaceous perennials might do wonderfully; the last two are native, but of course they're hard to find in Italy, where nurseries seem to despise native plants. It's really exciting to identify a new area of garden potential. Perhaps I could try fritillaries. Poet's narcissus, another native, might be happy there...I have never yet figured out how to get narcissus to grow in my garden. Japanese anemones, another repeated failure, but perhaps finally the conditions are in place for them to thrive. Sarcococcas in general, and S. orientalis in particular. It's not widely available, but can be found, and I located a nursery that offers young plants at a moderate price. I want to plant a drift of it. I want to get lily-of-the-valley established and invasive like I see it in other people's gardens.

All this activity is centered in the wood below the shade garden, with its drainage, its trees and shrubs, its rich humus. The big garden hasn't reached the point that I can think of growing much in the way of herbaceous perennials there, but the woods are ready for them. As I think about all this while working down there I keep an eye open for developments. No sign yet of snowdrops or winter aconite. Some of the wild orchids are growing, to flower starting in March: they may be evergreen, I'm not sure. Scattered bloom of sweet violets, fooled by the recent sunny weather. The wild hellebores are blooming, and the Orientalis cultivars are forming buds.

Two months to spring.