Garden Report

Garden gloves - J's ingenious way of keeping them organized

We definitely enjoy a change of seasons here in Rochester. The problem is, you never quite know when Mother Nature is going to flip the switch, and the mild days of late summer/early fall become the rainy, miserable days of late fall. So every fall, we have endless debates about when should we actually cut everything back.

J trims before mowing. Last mow of the season?

Today we had 70 degrees, sun, and high wispy clouds. There is still a lot of stuff blooming in the garden -- blackeyed susans, zinnias, obedient plant (a plant that must have been named with a wish rather than reality because it is NOT very obedient!). There are probably 40 rose buds ready to pop. And the bachelor buttons are making a comeback. So it seems too early to finish cutting everything back. I did do a really serious trimming back of the herb garden -- but I bet there isn't anything I could do that would seriously affect the mint or chives, is there? Even after a cataclysm, mint would survive!

Remind me to plant more zinnias!

This year we didn't accomplish everything we wanted to in "Phase 4" of our gardening project. We wanted to get a dry well installed in the "new garden" to deal with some of the water problems that I created when I put the garden in. But it just didn't happen. Maybe next year. And we didn't get the fountain going either. J has the idea that if we change the the plastic tubing to a larger size, the flow will shoot up higher. I don't know -- we will see next year because we didn't finish it this year!

Strawberry Bed

One thing we did accomplish was to put in a strawberry bed. We installed a raised bed on the side of the house last year, but the lettuces we grew there were bitter and disappointing. So J thought we should give some strawberries a try. We planted one June bearing plants, and they have gone great guns! I was afraid they would have enough sun, but that hasn't been the case. Maybe next year we will have to consider adding an asparagus bed. J and I have the opinion that you can't have enough asparagus!

Obedient Plant

We still have a few things we want to do before the end of the year. For one, I ordered a ton of tulip and daffodil bulbs. And allium. And some other stuff that I can't remember. When they show up, we will have to pop them in the ground. We also want to remove a rather significant limb from the red bud tree that is shading the climbing rose too much. And of course, the rest of the cutting back. So we probably have 2 or 3 more happy days in the garden. And then it's time to start dreaming about next spring, when there will be even more things to do and plant and trim and enjoy!