A Perfect November Day

The weather forecast for today predicted a fantastic day.  A hard overnight frost was followed by clear skies and temperatures that reached well into the 50's.  This glorious afternoon was spent running fallen maple leaves through the lawn mower creating perfect garden mulch.  The bags of shredded leaves will be piled and covered with a tarp.  If all goes as planned, we will find fine, dry, aged, ph proper mulch for our basil planting next June.  How much better than that does it ever get?

Our original Gloriosa daisies were given to us many years ago by Elle, an elderly gardener that took us under her wing.  Many of her plants still grow in our gardens so we remember her fondly and often.  This last of the season flower looks rather stunning dressed with frost.

Foxglove has found many locations around the garden to send down roots.  We prefer to have it grow at the base of stone walls.  That type of location seems satisfactory to the plant as it reseeds wildly there.  A generous coating of frost highlights the texture of these leaves.

Cone flower has been a favorite of the lady of the garden forever.  It now grows here in unmanageable numbers.  We hate to discard living plants but a run through the compost pile happens to this plant rarely.  An end of the season flower still holding petals and a perfect seed head looks lovely with its frost overcoat beginning to melt in the morning sun.

If our overnight freeze was harsh enough to end nearly all of the tiny biting black bugs, this will have been a truly perfect  day.

A Season of Bloom Ends

These two flowers mark the end of daylily blossoms here for this year.  Looking back, this has been a year of extremes for these plants.  An incredibly harsh late freeze turned their significant new growth into pale mush.  Certain that my daylilies were dead, I turned my attention to other parts of the garden unable to deal with the mess.  The daylilies did recover and flower impressively but their overall size may have been stunted.

This clear bright yellow flowering plant was sold to us as a Royal Palace Prince.  It in no way even distantly resembles that named variety.  We have absolutely no idea about the name of this plant if it is a named variety.   For me the ruffled petal edges and the lime green throat are more than enough to secure it a place in the garden.

Two years have elapsed since this plant arrived here.  It is short now but we will watch to see if it makes a more robust presentation next year.  I failed to check for scent today since getting that close to the ground is not as easy as it used to be.  We will find a location for this plant that takes advantage of its small size if that is how this plant presents itself next year.  We could use it as a foreground plant in front of spring bulbs.

Unlike the dayliies, this cone flower will return tomorrow and for many days after that.  For some unknown reason this single plant is displaying overall young growth.  In that sense it does mark the end of a season of spectacular bloom for this variety.  Cone flowers are overrunning the garden down by the road.  We will have to thin the returning plants and find something to do with the all of new seedlings that will appear like weeds.  As problems go this is not a bad one to face but we have great difficulty composting desirable healthy plants.  A little thing called winter will insert itself here between now and the time to deal with transplants.  We prefer to think about new locations for our returning plants.

Let's Make A Difference

We decided to take advantage of a break in the wonderful rain to get out there and make a difference.  We chose to work in the garden down by the road.  When Ed and I work together on the garden it is always time well spent.  Ed brought buckets of wood mulch  and started on the edge.  The mulch filled trench is intended to give the pasture grasses a place to grow in the direction of the garden without actually entering the garden.  If our weeding is timely, the trench is quickly cleared and none of those horrid white grass roots will have reached the garden.

I started cutting back dead flower stalks.  This patch of red bee balm was screaming to be cut back. That powdery mildew needs to be banished from the garden.  I filled the cart behind my tractor twice.

There is still so much beauty in the garden.  It was a pleasure to spend time giving it air and light.  These bee like insects are unknown to us since we do not recall ever seeing them here before.  Honey bees seem to have largely disappeared.  We are close to several huge dairy operations.  With them comes poisons to favor the growth of corn.  Their corn reached record heights but many of the honey  bees appear gone.

We spent just 190 minutes in the garden. I think we made quite a difference.  Perhaps others who drive by will not notice the change, but beauty has an impact on everyone.  We had a wonderful time!!!!!