If rain has suddenly become scarce, water transplants two or three days before digging. If the fall is dry, keep new plantings well watered. Hold off on transplanting deciduous shrubs and trees until all their leaves drop.

Divide spring- and summer-blooming perennials. Take notes on other people's fall-bloomers that you wish you had. Don't try to buy or divide them now; in spring, take your notes to a good garden center or nursery. Or sweet-talk a neighbor into dividing a robust specimen.

Plant bulbs as they are acquired (your house is a crummy storage area compared to the ground). Plant colchicum, fall-blooming crocus and fritillaria right away. Among spring bulbs, narcissus take priority over tulips. Mark each clump so that in summer and fall of 2010 you don't inadvertently dig into them.

Make your carrots and parsnips even sweeter by waiting to harvest them till after frost.

Withhold all water from last year's Christmas amaryllis for six weeks.

Prepare for the raking season by creating a compost system, elaborate or simple. Consult an accomplished composter or library books. The resulting rich humus is free and better than anything you can buy. Begin to inspect and wash houseplants that have summered outdoors and then bring them inside. Even though frost may be weeks away, the plants do better if they don't have to make a radical adjustment to a warm, dry house. Save seeds. In the vegetable garden, concentrate on heirlooms and herbs. Since different varieties are often cross-pollinated by the bees, you'll have better luck getting, say, a Cherokee Purple to come true next year if that was the only tomato you (and your neighbor) grew. In the flower garden, cosmos, balloon flower (platycodon), bachelor's buttons, portulaca, snapdragons and sunflowers are good candidates. Marigolds are not.

Deadhead caryopteris - unless you don't mind lots of seedlings next year.

Check espaliers, trained vines and shrubs to be sure cords or other fasteners are not girdling stems that have grown all season.

- Michael Martin Mills