Fall Garden Fun

It was a beautiful day today.  At 7:00 AM the sun  filled the sky with glowing color as it rose above the ridge, but the thing I really noticed was the speed with which the low clouds were moving along the ridge.  It turned into a cloudy day right before my eyes.  The fact remained that it was warm and pleasant outside.  Both Ed and I had been itching to work cleaning up the overly exuberant bed down by the road.   We loaded the tractor's cart with our tools and headed down the hill. First we each pulled a trug full of weeds from the woodland garden. We have high hopes for this garden in the spring.  Of course right now most of the plants are dormant.  It looks more and more like a natural woodland setting with every change that Ed makes!

All warmed up by pulling the small weeds in the woodland garden, we really went for the gusto here.  Ed trimmed back the huge Swallowwort also known as swamp milkweed.  It was magnificent, but needed to be cut back.  It definitely was a home to some orange aphids that needed to be sent packing.  Anise hyssop plants are a personal favorite of mine. I love their lavender flowers and sweet aroma,but they had jumped the stone edging and there where plants nearly as tall as me growing out of bounds in front of the bed.  Ed and his spade got called in for that big job.  It did not take long to fill the cart to overflowing with discarded plants.  Ed drove them up the hill to the rough compost pile.

It was a pleasure to mulch around the plants chosen to remain in the bed.  It is an amazing change with all the grass, nightshade and overgrown Johnny Jump Up plants gone.   Dead flower stalks from the coneflowers,  bee balm and false indigo filled the cart a second time.   Now we were getting somewhere!   Mulch was spread around the plants that were chosen to remain.

It was quite a reach for Ed to lean over the wall and  make this Siberian Iris and Daylily look presentable again.

The wind picked up and the sky began to darken.  More important than that it was lunchtime!  It was wonderful fun working together to return this out of control garden to a more civilized look.  This morning was perfect.  There is still more to be done, but we headed up the hill for lunch feeling really great, happy about what we accomplished together.