End of the Season

After several hard overnight frosts, I guess it's time to admit that the gardening growing season is over for 2011. I have continued to cover 4 of my deck pots at night, bringing them up close to the house in a little group.  My tuberous begonia was still blooming so beautifully and so were the gorgeous gazanias, that I didn't have the heart to let them go yet.  But since I will be away from home for 4 days this week, I doubt that my diligent husband will remember to cover them, so it's time to say goodbye.

I have been doing the last bit of fall gardening clean up in preparation for the deep freeze of winter.  I finished covering my rose bushes with garden clippings and peat moss to make a nice cosy covering. I think I will try and put a sack over my "Love" rose as well since it is only a zone 4 and will need extra protection from the uncaring elements. (I also realized that one should roll down their sleeves when working around rose bushes, and I have the scratches and gouges to prove it, LOL!)

Last flower bouquet/ tomato salsa/ a few plums

I also made a stealthy attack on my dandelion infested lawns in the hopes that this attack would work to get rid of many of them for next year. I had read online that in the fall the dandelions pull down nutrients into their deep ugly roots to give them the strength to over-winter. So, ideally, if you spray them with vinegar/ water at this time, they will pull it down into their root system and it will ultimately kill them. Hopefully this theory is true or I will just end up with the ugliest dead patchy lawn  imaginable! (Um, no, I didn't tell my husband my plan, I just went ahead and did it. Come spring, we'll just blame all the brown patches on winter kill....)

One last flower bed still needs to be clipped down and cleaned up and that's my new triangular shaped stack stone bed. The deer have been there helping themselves to the sunflower heads and they also tried to eat a bearded iris (which the deer proofing experts claim that deer don't like...) which resulted in the iris being unearthed. I had moved that one recently so the roots weren't established. I had to replant it so I hope that it makes it through the winter since it won't have time to set its roots.

Weird tomato

My greenhouse is still running but needs to have the heater on all night. The tomatoes in there are slowly coming to the end of their life and are starting to dry up even though we have been watering them well. I guess they know it's time to go back to nature, become ONE with the compost pile... lol!
 Next week we'll pick the last tomatoes which are still ripening on the vines and close the greenhouse down.  I have a lily, a hyacinth and an ameryllis growing in pots in the greenhouse, so they will have to come in the house and find a spot among the many geraniums that I 'rescued' from the garden.

There are still leaves on the trees which is so unusual for mid October. I like it, though! Maybe it's because we had so much rain this year... The ducks and geese are still here on the ponds in the area, but likely not for very much longer. I will miss them when they go. Then you know for certain that winter is just around the corner.