Autumn is Definitely Here

Golden poplar leaves

Had an interesting walk along the trails through the bush out here yesterday. It was a hot sunny day, about 26C, believe it or not, (after 3 weeks of cool, damp, rainy weather with killer frost every other night!) A warm wind was blowing quite fiercely and showering me with leaves blown off the trees!  I love once the leaves dry on the ground and they crunch when you walk on them!

Mountain Ash colors

Ornamental cherry tree

Last dahlia tuber has been safely stowed in a bag of peat moss in the laundry room ready for winter.  The tuberous begonias are next and once the frost kills them , the glad bulbs. For now I'm leaving them as long as they are green to grow and add strength to the bulbs. Then maybe next year I will have more success in getting them to bloom. They are my birth month flower (August), but sadly, I didn't manage to get any this year. :(            (Maybe I'll check at Sobeys! LOL!)

Early fall morning...

Migrating canada Geese

 I am amazed that my alyssum is still looking so great after all the frosts we have had! I knew that snap dragons and pansies are very hardy ( to -7C) but did not know that alyssum is, too!  Even my black-eyed Susan are still looking quite nice. Likely because they are close to the east side of the house and somewhat protected there.

The fall colors are so gorgeous! Too bad it only lasts about 3 weeks out here! The poplars are a beautiful golden yellow! Not a lot of reds, only a few of the smaller wild shrubs along the trails, but my ornamental cherry is a beautiful burgundy and the mountain ash leaves are orange and red...

Fall Colors at Buffalo Lake

Fall Colors at Buffalo Lake

Front yard- leaves starting to turn color- Sept. 26/2010

Not much growing anymore- tall yellow helianthus in centre; a few brave roses

Many of the poplars have already dropped their leaves

View of the south hill from the house

Constantly replenishing the bird feeder with oiled sunflower seeds....
Thankfully that huge flock of 50+ sparrows has moved on! The blue jays are still around, as well as the downey woodpeckers, nuthatches and my perennial favorites, the chickadees.

Apple tree is still green, but the poplars have all turned yellow in the last 3 days.
(Can you find the kitty returning from her hunting trip?)

Rhubarb, Pectin and Dahlia Tubers

We finally got a mostly sunny day today! It must be the first one in weeks ( and if it isn't... it sure feels like it is!)  But after 7 days of frost at night, there/s really not a lot that is thriving in the flower beds or garden, and many things are totally black and dead!

Yesterday I  cut some rhubarb which amazingly was still alive. I washed it and chopped it up to make a rhubarb crisp out of it tomorrow.  It's such an easy recipe to make and pretty much foolproof!

The tops of the dill was a little frost bitten, but I cut some off and am in the process of drying it to use this winter.

We picked 12 pounds of chokecherries yesterday off the trees in our yard. The berries are hanging in huge clumps and they look like mini dark grapes! I used 4 pounds and we made jelly.

Well, it is supposed to be jelly.... Still looks more like chokecherry syrup! I guess I shouldn't have used that recipe I found online after all.   It said to use only 4 1/2 cups of sugar and only one box of pectin.  I only had liquid pectin and the recipe on the box said to use 6 1/2 cups of sugar and 2 pouches of certo.  I guess liquid pectin and the dry crystals are not the same thing.... sigh!  I guess this means that tomorrow I will have to open the 7 jars and dump the chokecherry juice back in a pot to boil again and add 2 more cups of sugar and another pouch of certo.  The batch of chokecherry jelly I made last summer was absolutely the best jelly I have ever made! (And I make jelly and jam every summer.)  Wish I would have written down which recipe I use, darn it!

Today  I dug up my dahlia tubers and the 2 canna lily tubers in my stack stone flower bed.  With all the rain we have had ( almost every day all September long!) the ground was really soft and they came out easily. I cut off the stems and dead leaves and shook the dirt off the roots. Then I put each one in a separate paper bag with it's label, and added peat moss to each bag.  They will be over-wintered in the laundry room in the house and planted in pots next spring until it's warm enough to plant out again. I still have another dahlia plant and some tuberous begonias to dig out and over-winter as well.

I love gladiolas, but my gladiola bulbs were a big disappointment. Not enough sun this summer and they didn't even come close to blooming. They did much better last year. ( Yes. I over-wintered them, too!)  I think I need to choose a sunnier spot next year. But they were nicely sheltered and didn't get the frost at least. So I decided to leave them in the ground for now.... The forecast is for +18C and sunshine this weekend and part of next week, and at least they are still alive and look nice in the garden.

The only things that still look good out there are the yellow 6 foot tall helianthus false sunflowers in the middle of my round "angel" bed, some of the snapdragons, a few pansies and most of the black-eyed susans on the east side of the house. Three of rose bushes still have flowers but you can see that the frost got a lot of them. Maybe this last little warm spell this weekend will open the last few buds and I might be able to salvage a few to bring into the house.

I want to leave some lavatara plants and a few hollyhocks for another week or two to try and harvest some seeds to use for next year. I love lavatara and they need to be replanted here in Alberta every spring, so a few seeds to start indoors next spring would be nice.

The hollyhocks are perennials, but apparently they only last about 3 years and then you need to start new ones (which don't bloom the first year at all...) These hollyhocks have been in the ground here for 4 summers now. ( I started then in 2007 from seeds that were given to me by a friend in Thompson.)  I finally managed to grow 2 new young plants in a pot on the deck and still need to put them in the ground for next spring. I might have left it too late, but it's worth a try.

Jack Frost's Visit

Blanket flowers before the frost

Mother Nature who can be so glorious and beautiful, can also be so cruel and uncaring!

Last night September 16... we had a nasty frost, ( -4C). We were warned on the weather websites and so we tried to prepare for it. We dragged out a bunch of old sheets, pillow cases and towels and then had to decide what to cover.   The tomatoe plants were the first to get covered up snuggly, but we picked a bunch of the biggest tomatoes off them just in case...   Same with the lone spaghetti squash, (which is now sitting very greenly on the kitchen counter. I wonder if I should put it in the window in the sun? Would that help it to ripen faster? )

Then I decided I would cover my dahlias which were looking so spectacular to try and prolong their blooming! My orange Firebird dahlia had only just started to bloom last week....)
My rose bushes were my next concern. My new Morden Ruby red was covered in  small red blossoms and looking so appealing! The Winnipeg Parks rose had finally opened some blossoms and my Morden Centennial had its second set of gorgeous pink blossoms.

The gazanias were my next choice. They were all blooming profusely again after I had deadheaded them severely 2 weeks ago after returning home from vacation.  I had to be choosy though. The gazanias are spread out around 2 flower beds and I was running out of covers...

Mini Star gazanias

The last pick was the 'Surprise' oriental late blooming lilies which were looking so fabulous!  And then there are the star gazer lilies! Only 2 stems came up this year, but each stem had a dozen flowers on it and they were still looking superb! They got covered with the same sheet as the Ruby roses.

I also covered 3 of my big green tubs. The most beautiful one this year was the shade tub with the yellow tuberous begonias and the white fan flowers! That one definitely deserved to be covered!

Last I carried/ dragged some of the pots from the deck up close to the house and covered them up with the remainder of my covers. I put my red fleece jacket over the last one and then looked regretfully out at the unchosen pots.
"Sorry," I thought to myself. "I wish I could save you all."  But I knew some of them had to be sacrificed to appease the cruel frost demons!

Just after dark when I went out on the deck to call the cat, a fierce wind had picked up. That should have been a clue as to what was going to happen, but I went back into the house with the cat, oblivious to the effects of wind.

You can probably guess what happened!
In the morning we saw that most of my snuggly covers had been blown off  the carefully selected flowers that they were supposed to protect and Jack Frost had had his way with them!!!
My dahlias- all black mush! The geraniums-  frost bitten. The gazanias- limp and lifeless. The Lilies- dead!

I was so mad at first, but now I am resigned to the fact that the summer is over and all the work of fall clean up has arrived!  We are getting frost for 2 more nights so why bother trying to save anything now???   Strangely enough, one of the pots that I chose not to cover on the deck, the one with a profusion of Osteospermum daisies, still looks good!  Like Jack Frost thumbing his nose at me and trying to show me who is boss!

Seems like so much work for so little enjoyment this year. It really is disheartening!
But luckily gardeners have short memories and are long on optimism and by next spring, fools that we are, we will be itching to get outside and start planting and tending all over again!

Last of the Hollyhock blossoms

Arrival of Fall

 It seems that fall has arrived early this year. Each day I notice more and more leaves turning color. This is actually my favorite time of the year except that we had so little warm sunny weather this summer, that most of us feel cheated that fall is here already, when we were still waiting/ hoping for a little more summer.

At this time of the year it is so gratifying to go out into the vegetable garden and be able to bring in some of the fruits of our labor to enjoy!  It has been a very rainy summer so some things have not grown as well as one would hope, but other things don't seem to have let the excess moisture deter it. The red potatoes have done well and are quite abundant. In fact they are doing so much better than last year when we had no rain for weeks on end, but we did have plenty of brilliant sun. This year is the reverse.

The zucchinis, on the other hand are probably the most pathetic that I have ever grown, ( or maybe, "tried to grow" would be more like it!) Of the 3 plants out there, only one of them has any fruit at all, and then only one small zucchini was even edible. The other one was going rotten because of the contact with the wet ground.

The rhubarb was huge as usual this year and was one of the first things I harvested. (The chives plants were actually the very first thing that we could eat.  Being perennials, they got a jump ahead of most other plants and grew extremely well also.) I made some jam and did a fair amount of baking with rhubarb. One plant still has a large number of stems on it.

The dill is finally at the stage where it is worth cutting.   I have spearmint and ginger mint growing well in pots on the deck, too. I must remember to bring it inside to dry before the frost.

We were also pleased with the spinach and enjoyed many salads and cooked spinach. And of course the lettuce did well, the butter crunch head lettuce, the leaf lettuce and the romaine. The lettuce has bolted now, but some of it is still very tasty.

The Swiss Chard is huge and has outdone itself. We love to boil it in some salt water and then fry some onions in butter and add the boiled swiss chard to the pan.  The young leaves are also good in a salad.

I started some spaghetti squash plants from seeds in the spring and I was astonished to see that the plants which were so tiny for so long, have grown huge while we were away. Now there is one big green squash growing on the biggest vine!  I look forward to trying that once it ripens!

Tonight we ate fresh red potatoes and baby carrots from the garden. There are no better tasting potatoes in the world than that!

The tomato plants in the garden are large and healthy looking. Most of them have fruit, but none of the fruit is turning red yet. We did eat 2 red tomatoes about 5 weeks ago from one of the plants, but nothing since. We may have to pick the tomatoes regardless and take them into the house to ripen there, since the weather forecast is for frost for 3 nights in a row this weekend. It seems way too early!

There are 3 tomato plants in pots on the deck. The cherry tomato has been providing a handful of tiny, red fruit for weeks now. The 2 Black Crim heritage tomato plants, which I grew from seed are still pretty small. One of them has 2 medium sized tomatoes on it, though. The other.... nothing. At least those 3 pots can be brought in the house if the weather doesn't cooperate to give them a little longer growing season.

Today we transplanted 3 little saplings which were growing in the vegetable garden. I had planted them there last fall to allow them to grow another season so there would be more chance of success in transplanting them.  The little poplar was the easiest to move because I had planted it in the ground, pot and all.  It also had grown the least for the very same reason.

We planted the poplar and the 2 Manitoba Maple trees in the treed area behind our fire pit. There is a big stand of poplars there now, but many of them are dead or dying.  They were providing privacy from the road, so I am hoping the 3 new saplings will grow well and will provide the same service.

The unfortunate part of transplanting the maples was that all the dirt fell away from the root balls and it is always harder on a plant to transplant it with bare roots.  My husband dug the holes and we filled it partly up with good soil and water, then put each tree in and filled it with more soil and water. I must remember to keep them well watered to help them adjust, unless we get a lot of rain.

As I mentioned, we have a frost warning for this weekend. Last year we had a very late first frost. The trees still had most of their leaves on them well into October when the frost came. It was a really wicked hard frost, too and the leaves actually froze right on the trees and stayed there most of the winter! It looked very odd. I believe that that's very hard on the trees, too.
But, in the end, mother nature does what she wants regardless of our wishes.

Long Absence

Blue calabash and orange gazanias

After a 4 week absence from my garden it was wonderful to see it again!  August is not the best time to leave your garden behind, but it's not often that we get the opportunity to visit Europe. Luckily we found someone to water my deck pots and house plants (our pet sitters) and Mother nature took care of watering the flower beds and the vegetable garden. Normally we get very little rain here at Buffalo Lake in July and August so the weather cooperated beautifully this summer, I am pleased to report. I wasn't sure what state my garden would be in when we returned. Many things have actually grown quite lushly in our absence! (So much for plants needing human TLC!)

Star gazer lilies

In the time we have been away, so much has changed!  I regret that I missed the blooming of many of my oriental lilies, but the star gazer lilies are still going strong and smelling spectacularly! And amazingly enough, several other lilies are still in the bud stage, getting ready to open, so I will be able to enjoy them soon.  (Surprisingly, the deer have not found those tasty morsels, but the secret there is to keep the deer from establishing your garden as an eating location right at the beginning of the growing season. Then they don't come on a regular basis to browse. The deer deterrent spray 'Plant Skydd' has done wonders in that respect.)

Cactus dahlias started from tubers in the house in spring

My red cactus dahlias are even more spectacular than before! It is the first thing you notice when you look out at my 'stack stone bed'. I have had these particular dahlia tubers for over 6 years now and they continue to be dazzling every year. Of course it is a certain amount of work to dig the tubers up every fall and over-winter them in the laundry room till spring, since they are soft bulbs, but the small amount of work is rewarded in a big way!  I really have no idea what the average life of a dahlia tuber is. Because the plant keeps making new tubers each summer alongside the old, I'm not sure from year to year the ages of the ones I keep. (I usually just keep the biggest tubers each year.)

Then there's my late blooming fireglow dahlia which just began to open yesterday! It's a beautiful firey yellow/ orange color... very autumnlike. This is one year that I'm not complaining about how slow it is!  But since dahlias are very susceptible to frost, I will have to start watching the nighttime weather forecasts for frost warnings and cover them as needed.


My Morden rose bushes continue to amaze me! The new little 'Morden Ruby' that I had planted this June is covered in small but spectacular deep red blossoms and my 'Blush' is blooming beautifully for the second time this summer with an abundance of baby pink flowers.

Helianthus needs more staking...

Many of the sunflowers that my marmot garden helpers had planted in my flower beds are blooming now was well. I love the sunny little heads of the sunflowers as they gaze adoringly at the sun, basking in its warm rays!  My helianthus growing in the middle of my 'Angel bed' is  about 7 feet tall now and needs to be staked up better. It's drastically leaning at one side!  I had put 4 long stakes in the ground and wrapped string around it when it was shorter, but now it has outgrown it and needs more string closer to the top. (Will get my favorite garden helper (my husband) to help me do that today.)

Purple echinacea flowers, purple liatris spike, remains of blue sage flowers, 1 small yellow sunflower

My echinacea (cone flowers) are looking so fabulous! I love their huge purple blossoms on top of the tall stately stems. It took 3 years to get this plant to this stage, and many of the other cone flowers I tried to grow kept dying. But I persisted and I have 2 others as well, each in other beds, but they are not looking as gorgeous as this one which is located at the top of my rock garden next to the deck.

My gayfeather (mauve colored) liatris has pretty long spikes of flowers now, but is crowded out by the huge blue sage and the cone flower. My white liatris in the same bed is only looking mediocre. Again, probably not enough sun due to the aggressive growth of the other perennials around it.
I like this plant and would love to get a few more, but I would need to find a better location, I think.
The interesting thing about the liatris is that the blossoms open the opposite order of most other plants which start blooming at the bottom of the spike and work upwards. The liatris opens the tiny blossoms at the top of the flower spike first and then works downwards.

My favorite gazania's "tiger eyes"

Yesterday I spent a couple of hours in my flower beds clipping the spent maltese cross which have all gone to seed now. Normally I clip the tops of the maltese cross in mid August as they finish blooming(to prevent the massive spread of the tiny poppy seed-like seeds), keeping some of the greenery. Then in late September I cut them down to about 6 inches in time for winter. This year, though, I decided to skip step 1 and proceed right to step 2 and I have cut them right down. I also started trimming my many delphiniums which have also gone to seed.  I still have my long bed down the middle of the yard to tackle where most of the delphiniums reside and the other 50 % of my maltese cross.

Today the weather promises to be sunny and warm, +23C according to the forecast so I plan on spending part of the afternoon in my flower beds. But my kayak is calling me, too, so I think I will listen to that call as well. I look forward to floating on the still waters of Buffalo lake again, enjoying the birds and the sunshine, at least until the boaters and sea-doers all descend for the Labor day weekend.

Found the catnip!