Outdoor Cleanup

That is the autumn clematis picture collage I made for the plant profile page- the vine is still blooming, but pretty much blown, now. The fuzzy little seedheads are appearing and giving the whole arbor a hazy look. I will post the article this week. Right now I am featuring an article on some of my favorite varieties of tulips. I probably have as many again to write about in a later post.

We are beginning our outdoor cleanup. The leaves are still all on the trees, but the grass needed mowing, weeding needed to be stepped up, and it is time to put away some of the less used outdoor furniture, so there won’t be such a rush when the fall rains come. Some rain is predicted throughout the next week.

I haven’t been driving around the area as much, so when I went out on errands last week it seemed like a wand of time had waved over the fields. I felt very much in the spirit of old Rip van Winkle, to awaken to fields turned overnight to fall tints. The corn, last remembered to be vigorously green and lush had turned to its tawny, tawdry, autumnal stature. The green rows of soybeans now took on their burnished golden colors of harvest time. The trees, too, hinted of fall colors in bits and spurts of gold and red among the verdure of summer’s growth. Where does the time go? Is it really so close to Autumn frosts and winter fires?

I stuck the edger in the ground in hopes that one of us would start the fall edging of the grass verges. The old fashioned sort that looks like a half-moon, this was handed down to me by my dad. The one that once was mine had long ago succumbed to over arduous use by teenage boys who dislike such garden tasks and think that jumping on the tool somehow gets the job done faster. Doesn’t do that, but will eventually bend and break the tool. Even the strong ash handled ones. I keep retraining a new teen helper, and now hope that we all will keep my dad’s old tools, and the new replacements I bought, in good order. Here’s to that hope, keeping my fingers crossed.

I have written a number of new articles for my garden website, more to get the information up than to be seasonally pertinent. I have one on Autumn clematis, some on foundation plants, and expanded on the flowering kale post that I had here.

My goal is to get as many of the profiles of my favored or useful plants online, as possible. I always wanted something like that when first gardening: buy a plant and then have a handy guide to its planting preferences.

It was early to do it, but moved my planter containers into the green house. I want to save some of the plant material for next year, and so often I wait and they get blasted by frosts. There must be some garden form of the saying “stitch in time”, but I don’t know what that is.