In talking to many of my gardening friends, there seems to be a common thread weaving through our conversations — this fall has been frustrating! Summer just doesn’t want to end. It is a real conundrum!

Take my 106 geraniums, for example.

As I shared earlier this year, I went the simple route this season and filled almost all of my containers with a vibrant mix of geraniums. It was a very cohesive look against — what some might consider — an excessive amount of variety in the rest of my garden. As much as I have enjoyed them over this summer, and as much as they were still looking good, I finally gave in this last week and ripped them all out. In their place I have now planted roughly the same number of assorted pansies and violas, under which I have tucked in a generous layer of tulip, daffodil and hyacinth bulbs. Again, it is a simple and unifying look that quiets down what I like to refer to as my “organized chaos” gardening style.

What I find so amazing about the above activity is how cathartic it has been. No longer am I being held back by the feeling that I have to keep nursing my summer flowers along, coaxing out every last blossom in the name of “getting my money’s worth.” I have closed that door and it is a very liberating feeling. I am also surprised about how quickly I have forgotten about all of the joy those geraniums brought me and how now, those very same pots, filled with the happy faces of pansies and violas, are just as joyous and will only get better by spring when the bulbs start to bloom. Maybe it is my addictive personality and the need to move from one dopamine hit to the next, but pitching those geraniums and replacing them with pansies and violas was the right thing to do.

While this has been a lovely summer (once it got here), it is time to embrace the season and get into the spirit of fall. The burning bushes are having their two weeks in the spotlight, my katsura tree is filling my garden with the smell of cotton candy, the neighbor’s Eastern white pine is performing its annual shedding of the two-year-old needles all over my lawn, the asters are in full color in shades of blue, purple, pink and white (offering a nice contrast to the last fading blooms of the rudbeckias and heleniums), and the spent hydrangea flowers are shifting to the pinkish-red spectrum — all signs that despite the warm weather, fall is all around us.

As for the rest of my garden, now that the geraniums are gone, I need to tackle the shade bed where my “still looking voluptuous” coleus and begonias are next on the hit list. Then it’s down with the three remaining hanging baskets, which I will unceremoniously deconstruct, pitching out everything but the Bolivian begonias. They will be allowed to dry out and placed in my cool garage to go through the required dormant period before they wake up again in February.

If you, too, are feeling a little frustrated with our endless summer, then do what I did with my 106 geraniums and change out those summer annuals. Not only will your garden look fresh, but you will also feel a sense of relief and renewal with a newfound determination to leap into those fall chores and ready the garden for the fall rainy season — that is, if it ever shows up!

Steve Smith represents Sunnyside Nursery in Marysville and can be reached at sunnysidenursery@msn.com

Free classes

Sunnyside’s next free classes in the nursery are “Conifer Kingdom,” 10 a.m. Oct. 22, and “Putting The Garden To Bed,” 11 a.m. Oct. 23. For more information, go to www.sunnysidenursery.net/classes.