A great joy in retirement is not waking hours before sunrise to witness the chilliest hour as I did for four decades. Of course, rising with the morning sun the nighttime low is long past and our current indoor thermometer does not register the overnight low temperature for later viewing. With lows forecast to fall to the mid-twenties (Fahrenheit) this week my most reliable indicator will be the flowers of camellias. I suspect that last night did not fall below twenty-five degrees.

With hybrid and Sasanqua camellias often flowering into December, and two camellias that rarely begin flowering until December, I regularly monitor new blooms for cold damage. Only one newly planted Sasanqua camellia, ‘Autumn Rocket’ (below) is close enough that the house provides some cold protection, so I’ll be interested to see if its flowers make it through twenty-five degree nights while others are damaged.

While freezing temperatures are not unusual in November, in recent years mid and low twenties have been rare until late in the month. Besides the flowers of camellias and a few reblooming azaleas, there are few flowers to be damaged. Witch hazels (Hamamelis virginiana) and late autumn flowering mahonias (Berberis x hortensis) tolerate much colder temperatures, but it’s likely I’ll see browned blooms of camellias and azaleas (below) by the weekend.

The half hardies and tropicals have been dug and potted, then stashed in the basement with a few jammed in the greenhouse. A time or two while I was working this snuck up on me so I was digging in a panic before a freeze that night, but over the past few days all were dug at a leisurely pace.

As the breeze was picking up and the temperature falling I realized I had forgotten a variegated schefflera, so I was back outside to pop it into a pot. Other scheffleras survive outdoors in protected spots, but this one’s a houseplant that spends half the year in the ground, the other months sheltered indoors.

The back half of the basement near the backdoor is now inconveniently cluttered by plants. Maintaining these is not too great a chore, though this encourages my inattention so that many leaves are lost due to prolonged dryness. By early spring I anxiously count the days until all can be moved outdoors, but today, there are too many frosty nights ahead to begin the countdown.