October Summer?

Another beautiful mid October day today! It has been warm and sunny like this for the last 2 weeks! The forecast for today is +20C , if you can believe that. Sure makes fall garden clean up more agreeable!

I was out on the Thanksgiving weekend and also yesterday doing more flower bed clean up. That job never seems to end! I keep telling myself that whatever work I do now will mean less work to do come spring, but I know deep down that that is really only partly true.  I am reluctant to hack down anything that is still green right now, where as, come spring, it will all be yellow, dry and dead so that makes it easier. I find myself being selective in what I’m yanking out or clipping, so in reality I will end up going back to the same bed more than once to clean it completely.

I want to leave anything that the birds might like to munch on come winter, but on the other hand, I don’t want all my overly aggressive perennials to go to seed too much. I can already see that I have a massive amount of tiny white daisy seedlings trying to grow everywhere. I weeded as many daisies out as I could, but soon got tired of it and made a note in my gardening journal to finish that job in one particular bed (the lower level of my rock garden) in the spring. 

The birds are nibbling on the seeds of the lilacs which I always leave.

Canada geese flying overhead on their way south to warmer climates

 I was also reluctant to clip the blue sage (called May Night... a beautiful dark royal blue that for some reason I sometimes see at night when I close my eyes before I go to sleep...). The sage spikes still have a few blue flowers at the very tips and I see bees there every day getting the last of the nectar. So I compromised and clipped the two thirds closest to the stairs and left some at the far end of the plant for the bees to enjoy.  We are expecting a hard frost in a day or two ( -7C) so I imagine by then, the bees will be staying in their hives and hibernating so it should be safe to finish the job. (I wonder how many new little blue sage plants will be sprouting up there in the spring.... )

Fall garden, not as colorful as summer, but still has its appeal

Strangely enough, my lilac hedge at the back of the house still has a lot of leaves left on it at this time of year when almost all other trees and shrubs have dropped theirs. Not sure why, but possibly because of all the precipitation we have had this whole growing season.

Lilacs still have their leaves in October

I trimmed day lily leaves and dug up more grass (what a nuisance!) out of the rock garden bed yesterday. 

Then I planted some grape hyacinth bulbs (which my friend BA had kindly given me) in the west side of my stack stone bed. I shared a dozen of them with my daughter who was visiting on the Thanksgiving weekend for her to plant in her own flower bed. She had a little bunch of grape hyacinth outside her bedroom window growing up at our house in northern Manitoba, and we both always enjoyed seeing them bloom in early spring.

I finally got started on cleaning up my wild flower bed and wild it is!  There is so much tall grass in there it’s amazing that other things still can grow! I think that’s another thing to write in my garden journal under “To Do for 2011”: Dig out some of the worse areas of grass especially those that are trying to encroach on my newly planted peonies there, (which I hope will eventually reward my efforts with some flowers!)  I trimmed about half of the maltese crosses and spent daisies in that bed. 

I left the peonies alone though.  My own experience, as well as the Lois Hole perennial book has shown me not to baby peonies.  One year I got energetic and trimmed back the peonies in the fall and added mulch. The next spring the peonies had LESS flowers than they had when I did not trim and mulch them. The Lois Hole book says that peonies need to have the cold temperatures in the winter in order to bloom well in the spring. The only thing you really need to remember to do for them is give them a good drink of water late in the fall to prevent them drying out.

Time to go out and finish the job of trimming the wild flower bed now!  

The last job to do is trim the huge mass of day lilies next to the pond and then put mulch on the rose bushes. I have saved some clippings to do that with and also will add some leaves and some peat moss to hold it all in around the rose bushes to make a nice snuggly blanket for the winter months. I think a bit of water to wet it down should help keep it from blowing away until the snow comes to cover the flower beds. 

But lets not talk about snow just yet!   :)