Will the frost hold off a little bit longer?

Interesting garden activities of late. It is early-mid november, and we have been having lots of lovely, sunny 60-80 degree days the last few weeks. It's not quite an Indian Summer (no hard frost yet) but it has made for some amazing walks in the woods. But it is also messing with the heads of a few of my plants.

The roses are blooming like crazy, and I hoping most of the existing buds get a chance to open before the frost does them in. There are a good dozen or so buds in various states of flower, on top of the dozen or so I cut last weekend that were at their peak to give to the girl... Does it count against me that my first thought was "I should cut these before the frost kills them -- I know, I'll give them to the girl" and not "These are beautiful. I should cut them and give them to the girl, who is also beautiful"?

Then there is my dwarf swamp sunflower (Helianthus 'Low Down'). I got it back in may, a little worse for wear, but still healthy and vigorous. Maybe I put it in the ground too late in the spring, but that little bugger didn't do a damn thing all summer (you know, when sunflowers are supposed to be blooming). But it budded out about three weeks ago, and there are actually a number of the flowers that have managed to open in the last week or so - it's not super-impressive, but it gives a good indication of what I may be treated with in the coming years (unlike it's better known cousins, this sunflower is a perennial). This is definitely one of the few plants I put in the ground that I will dig up and take with me if I move out.

I have also finished two more troughs - both of the grout-over styrofoam type, rather than manufactured from hypertufa. The larger of the two is the 2nd biggest I've ever made. I only did it after I saw a great big styrofoam cooler sitting in the middle of the road on the way to my house. I'd never seen a styrofoam box that big before. I got to it just as a cop stopped in the middle of the road to move it - when I came over to him, he asked if it was mine. I said "no, but I was going to take it anyway". He didn't seem to mind. It was, after all, a piece of trash.

I'm very much looking forward to planting them up (hopefully this weekend). I would have at least partially planted them this past weekend, but I realized that I have quite a stockpile of trough-worthy plants, but I hadn't thought which ones go well together. So I made a list of all the available plants and their cultural requirements - just to make sure I don't end up sticking a shade-lover with a sunny drought-tolerant plant. Sadly, I've made such mistakes a number of times in the last few years.

One trough I didn't screw up is one that I replanted this past weekend - it's previous occupants died a sad death this summer - four silver saxifrages that just couldn't take our Mid-Atlantic heat and humidity. So in the place of the saxes are Dwarf Arctic Birch (Betula nana), Corsican Mint (Menthus requienii), and Bluets, aka Quaker Ladies (Housitonia caerulea) . All of them like a nice moist soil, and will hopefully do well in the shadow of my whiskey barrel pond - absorbing all of it's overflow.

Of course, what I should really be doing is working on my application to Stonecrop (it came in the mail last Friday). But that's another story entirely...