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!   :)

Gardeners are Optimists

The wild roses here along the trail to the lake are blooming!  And so is the little shrub put against the house.  :) Quite a feat considering the little sunshine we have been getting this spring. (Rain and overcast/ rain and overcast/ sun/ more rain, more clouds....) Sigh! It seems that Mother nature has been trying to catch us up on our lack of moisture (a deficit we have had for many years) all at once!

Wild rose bushes starting to bloom

 But on the plus side, most of my flowers are continuing to grow and flourish. I have 5 peony plants in various stages of growth depending on which flower bed they are located in.  The best one has a large number of healthy stems and 6 or 7 big buds. A huge improvement from last year when it grew like crazy, but only had one flower!  Although I consider myself a successful and knowledgeable gardener, peonies are not my forte. I tried growing them for many years without too much success.

 I lived in Red Deer, AB in the late 1970's and was a beginner gardener.  I planted 4 peonies one summer, but never got them to bloom. When I moved 3 years later, I dug them up and moved them with us to a new location, further north in Alberta,  planting them again with great care. Although they came up and had lovely greenish red stems every year, they still never bloomed.  "You have to wait 3 years", I was told. After 3 years... no flowers.  "You planted them too deep", I was told.

I moved again, this time to northern Manitoba, leaving my uncooperative peonies behind. But a few years later I bought another peony (just stubborn, I guess) and I tried again. This peony plant was already blooming when I bought it and it looked great in my flower bed!  I was very careful not to plant it too deep. I tried to plant it at exactly the same level as in the pot like the directions stated.

The next spring... nothing came up.... At that point I decided that maybe peonies were not for me. I could grow almost anything else, I told myself, so forget the peonies! Did I listen to my own advice?  Not a chance. I guess I saw it as a challenge! So, yes, the following year I bought another peony in full bloom and tried again. That one did come up the following spring, but again, no flowers!

It broke my heart to see the peony bushes next door being ignored and neglected by their owner and still blooming their little hearts out, when here I was, bending over backwards to no avail! Was I trying too hard?

Fate intervened and we ended up retiring and we moved here to this idyllic location at Buffalo Lake. Guess what was in the flower beds here???    Peonies!  They bloomed beautifully with no help from me!

The one nearest the house, right close to the pond is doing the best  again this year.

Peony budding (More photos to follow when it blooms!) 

This peony gets deep pink blossoms and, as long as I remember to apply the 'Plantskydd', the deer will leave the buds alone.  I should be able to enjoy those peony flowers opening in another week or two!

Two other peony plants are at the far end of the yard in my 'wild' flower bed. The trees have grown so much there, even in the last 4 years since we have moved here, that the peonies no longer get a lot of sun.  Thus they seem to have fewer and fewer buds each spring.  I trimmed some of the tree branches last summer to try and improve that.

 I got a pleasant surprise one day last summer!  I noticed a flash of color one day in behind some of the trees which shade that bed. I ducked under the tree branches and went to investigate. There I discovered one beautiful peony blossom blooming away in the shade! I had not even known that plant was there! At one time it had probably been a sunny location, but now the trees had grown around it.

In the fall I dug that peony out and moved it to the front of that bed.  This spring I thought at first that it hadn't survived the winter, but it has sprouted now. I know it likely won't bloom for a couple of years, now that I have transplanted it, but I think it will do far better in its new spot since there is a lot more sun there.
One of  the old originals at the north side of that bed is always really slow to sprout shoots. It still has none so far, (June 17), but each year, just as I'm about to give up on it, it does sprout and get a blossom or two, although quite late into July.

I planted another new peony last year too, which I bought at a local green house, (thinking that the above mentioned peony had died...)  I think it's called Sara Bernhardt.   It came up and got leaves early this spring, but I don't know if it will get buds this year or not. But true gardeners have a huge amount of patience. Like my friend B always says, each year we think that this year we are going to have that perfect garden and that thought gives us energy and incentive to plant and weed and water in expectation.  Reality soon sets it some time around July and we make the best of the conditions that Mother Nature has provided and try to enjoy those things that are doing well.

By August we have realized that we don't have the perfect garden this year either and we start thinking and dreaming about what we are going to change next year to have that perfect garden then.
Gardeners are perennial optimists, right Barb!?

(I know these are not peonies... couldn't find any good photos in my files... these will have to do for now! LOL!)