“Wow! Right now there are just a million different wonderful colors out in the garden.” That was my first statement upon looking out of my window this morning. The day is overcast and I don’t think the sun had even risen yet and those autumn colors sure were putting on a display. The leaves, tree trunks, shrub branches, spent perennials and the flowers still blooming looked stunning this morning. Every autumn color is represented from the electric oranges and reds to subtle yellows and browns. The Larch is just about at it’s full autumn glory and the purple birch as turned a magical, warm red. I’m going back to the window for more!
Just some more autumn clean-up this weekend. I cut the peonies down along with liatris and pulled the few stray weeds. I emptied and stored the copper hanging pots with the spent annuals going in the compost and the potting soil into my soil recycle pile. I pretty much use the recycled soil when dividing and moving perennials in the garden. (I feel like I must sound a bit Martha Stewart). Then I winterized and covered up the fountain with a tarp and collected all the garden ornaments and stored those as well. Finally, I took cuttings of all my scented geraniums togrow over the winter in the house for planting out again next year. The herbs will be fine, but the geraniums will not and I’d hate to loose them as they aren’talways easily found.
Finally, I planted:
- Fritillaria Imperialis bulb (a gift from myparents from Amsterdam)
- California Poppies relocated from elsewhere in the garden
- Liatris relocated from elsewhere in the garden
- Ornamental Grass
We had our first frost on October 11th and it’s been a regular occurrence since. Autumn is here! The leaves are changing and the garden is still doing well and hasn’t suffered too much from the frost at all. I just have to seriously consider winterizing the fountain and stowing the ceramic birdbath soon.
It’s the time of the year where garden clean-up becomes a priority. I cut back all my floppy dahlias. They should keep blooming, but now they are a bit more upright. Nothing like a good rain and wind to knock the plants over. Then I pulled all the sweet peas. They stopped blooming with the last rain and were just getting unattractive. That’s about did it for today’s clean-up which was an easy day as far as clean-up goes. It will get a bit more labor intensive as the growing season draws to a close. Then it will be time to plant bulbs, move shrubs and divide perennials.
…and they better not damage my plants! The irrigation guy is raising the slope sprinkler heads about 2 feet for better coverage on 7 sprinkler heads. I can’t watch. The one time I peeked out the window, he was knee deep in my prized, and by far favorite dahlia. The stalks are rather brittle and I don’t even want to know what happened to it. Of course, once the contractors are done I will need to find some camouflage spray paint as white PVC is not all that attractive. (Oh no, now the guy went charging through another dahlia. Ugh!) I figure that I’ll paint the PVC pipe and will then plant some appropriate camouflage plantings as well- just tall enough to hide the pipe and bracing but low enough not to interfere with the irrigation. I’ll probably rant about the plant damage tomorrow once I go out there to inspect the situation this evening.
