Seasonal Adjustments

Almost without notice our focus in the garden has shifted.  Planning for the current garden is long past and we are now looking forward to next season.  For me the major excitement is starting seeds, dividing perennials and planning where to place them.  Many Winter hours are spent reading catalogs. Harvest should be a time of joy if the crops are abundant, but it also clearly signals an end to the process.

These Dakota Rose potatoes are both beautiful and numerous this year.  We mail order our seed from the Potato Garden.  By the time our order is processed, most of the country has their potatoes in the ground.  I prefer to plant whole small potatoes.  This year our order arrived when requested and consisted of numerous small seed potatoes as requested.  The metal basket contains the harvest from only three hills.  Pound for pound this has to be a record crop.  Good luck and frequent rainfall are no doubt the key factors here.
  

Our nursery bed has allowed these mail order day lilies to put on good growth over the past two or three years.  Nearly all of the flower stalks have been removed as have the dead leaves.  I always manage to miss a few.  We will move these plants to a more spacious final location come Spring.  It is highly likely that new mail order plants will refill this nursery bed.

The weeks of bright blossoms, many with sweet scents, were a source of grand enjoyment.  The flowers were wonderful but now they are gone.  That is the name of the game but somehow sadness with the season's passing is close by.
 

This nameless plant produced many light yellow scented flowers.  We took a division from it earlier this year and placed it near the wall in the garden down by the road.  The newly separated plant flowered in its new and likely final location.  Driving the road toward home, we saw the flowers rising  above the wall.  The scene was impressive with the plant mostly hidden behind the wall.

Here, the plant is close to Mammoth Pink Chrysanthemums.  This combination should work well together.  If the day lily were planted behind the chrysanthemums it would appear that the combination was better planned.

Somehow our days have come to be one hour shorter than previously.  Sunlight streaming through the bedroom window formerly had us up and active by 6 am.  Now we are lucky to roll out by 7 am.  This is just another in a collection of seasonal adjustments.