Hello snow, what do you know?

This morning, the main story on the local news was about the hundreds of cars stranded on the highways as a result of last night's snow and ice.  

It's not that bad in the city (although very icy), but it is now definitely winter.  I know, we have a month yet before the shortest day and all that.  We can't argue with the white stuff.  It's boot weather; it's time to exchange the midweight wool coat for a nice puffy wind-resistant stuffed parka; it's time to put the lawnmower away and bring the salt, ice chipper, and shovel up from the basement; it's time to set the heat to come on before we get home in the evenings; it's time to put the big cauldron of mittens, hats and scarves in it's convenient-to-the-door location; it's time to stop watching last year's garden.  The gardening season is over.  

I'm going to try to keep up with the blog anyway.  Sooner rather than later I'm going to be fretting about next year's indoor plantings.  There's the indoor herb garden (still flourishing, even the crazy basil) and the potted plants.  The christmas cactus is looking good.  

Besides, in the next month I'm planning to be away from these snowy climes and in slightly more temperate bits of the world.  Perhaps I'll find something to say about other people's gardens.  

So, for the last report:  The gazania is covered in snow and ice.

The yellow flower has collapsed under the weight of the snow and ice.

The outdoor blooming season, 2008: March 6 - November 20.

Same old, same old

Well, I haven't had much to report, so ye olde blogge is going untended.

The gazanias are apparently still alive.  The yellow mystery flower in the front is apparently still alive.  The bulb sprouts are still popping out of the rapidly-cooling earth.  

The leaf-collectors came on Sunday night and now (hopefully) the flooding we were seeing on our street (because the sewer grates were leaf-clogged) is over until there's an ice-dam.  

The weather is becoming properly wintery.  I now do believe that it's snowing somewhere nearby (although it's still raining here).  We'll see our first snowfall sometime soon.  Probably before I take off on the next trip.

It's an update, but I'll admit, not a scintillating one.

I don't believe it

I just don't believe it.  Yes, there are grey clouds gathering overhead, but snow seems unlikely.  What's it going to do when it reaches the ground?  What's it going to do when it reaches the 3 degree air?  

I think that if these clouds are capable of anything, it's nasty rain.  It doesn't smell like it's going to snow.

Watching (without photos, natch)

The gazanias are still alive.

The yellow flower in front is still alive.

There are little bulb-shoots popping up in the front now, too.  I do worry about them.

The high today is predicted to be a not-at-all-balmy 7.

I finally remembered to grab the garlic on the way out the door this morning, so it is at least in the right general area for planting.  

We're supposed to have another warm, wet weekend, so I don't feel too bad about putting things in this late.

Flower Death Watch

I want to keep better (daily) track of the state of the last of the blooms than I did of the zinnias. 

On Saturday when I was clearing things there were a couple of slightly-alive marigolds that I left in the ground.  I think that they're probably really done for now (it was cold last night), but until their colour fades, I think I'll leave them where they are.

The gazanias are still alive and flowering.  Unfortunately, this morning's picture was before the sun hit, so it's not what you'd call conclusive evidence.

Note(s) to self

I'm pretty sure this happened last year, but one of the huge advantages of the blog is that I now have a place to write these things down so I can check year by year.   The note is that the bulbs I planted a few weeks ago are sprouting.  It makes me very nervous.  I want them to survive what will no doubt be a cold and unfriendly winter.  They shouldn't be putting their precious juices into tender green shoots which will be destroyed when the weather goes below zero this week.  But, like I said, I am pretty sure this happened last year, too.  Maybe it'll be alright.  

I planted the last of the bulbs yesterday, mostly in a very crowded planting next to the basement window:

That's not an art shot, I know, but it does show me where they're planted and I used old blog entries to see where there were no bulbs already.  I'm telling ya, this blogging thing isn't bad.

But for it to be effective, I should probably keep honest about what things really look like.  

That's the front, as yet uncleared.  I might leave the leaves because I don't think there are any maple leaves in that pile.  Plus, if I clear the sidewalk and let the mulch pile higher on the bed, maybe more people will stick to the sidewalk and leave the bed to coddle bulbs. 

I had a hopefully good idea about what to do with the side front.  It is completely weed and tall-grass overgrown with no plan for redemption ... until now.  That can be where the herbs run rampant!  It can be a mint patch, no probs.  It doesn't really connect to anything.  There are a couple of shrubs which are large enough to look after themselves (probably).  If I fill it with mint then it will look after itself.  I could put in a few kinds, maybe, but it's not in a spot I would eat from.  I just want something healthy and deliberate to be growing there instead of the disaster it is now.  

Autumn Clean-Up

Yesterday, I raked leaves and put them into bags.  After finishing clearing the "lawn" (don't worry, "clearing" should have been in quotes, too, as of this morning), I turned around and saw the leaf-littered side yard and decided to tackle it right away.  Usually I just let it sit and be leafy all winter long, on the theory that the leaves are mulch and prevent weeds from taking an early hold in the spring and keep the ground moist if there's a dry spell.  But there's this tar spot thing and I thought I couldn't leave them be.  

So, I put on some thick gloves and clawed around the base of all my plants.  It was quite nice sometimes and quite nasty at others.  The thyme greeted me with a lovely scent which lingered in the air.  I thought the lavender would be even nicer, but it had been beset by some kind of mushroom which then rotted at its base, so the lavender smell was overpowered by that dusty fusty musty mushroom smell.  That became quite familiar to me.  There were a lot of those little nasty spheres which actually turn into a sinister black powder when they decay.  Nothing eats them, so I am quite certain that they are very bad.

After the leaves that had fallen from the trees were taken care of, the side still looked a bit ragged.  The glads, irises and daylilies were all past their peaks, but still somewhat clinging to life through a few yellowing spears.  I got rid of the worst of the yellows and then cut the rest short.  I don't think there is time for real new growth before the winter and hopefully they'll concentrate on their bulbs for the rest of the year.  

I pulled up the last of the dead marigolds and zinnias, the dead nasturtiums and the gone (never really arrived, actually) scarlet runner.  I left the gazanias, of course.  I can spare another few hours to clean them out when the time comes.  I can't believe they're still going.  When I got them, I said "Hopefully, they'll last for a while".  Five months is, indeed, a while.  I'm more than slightly satisfied.

I'll take pictures later, after I've put in the last of the bulbs.  Yes, that's right.  I haven't finished planting those bulbs.  Sigh.

Ah-choo!

Yesterday morning, I looked out the front window to see a solid carpet of yellow leaves.  It was like the tree had sneezed REALLY hard and lost all of its leaves in a single go.  There was (and still is) a car parked under the tree which has a good inch or two of leaves on its roof and not much to speak of underneath.  

This morning, I finally had the chance to go out and rake a bit (after the rain, of course, not in the beautiful dry weather we had all the way up to midweek).  I still can't believe how thick on the ground the leaves were under the tree in front.  It's unreal.  

Someone else had beaten me to the task of getting the leaves off the curb so they don't block the gutter, so there were little nasty stacks of slime-encrusted crushed leaves periodically all down the side.  I've been dutifully putting them into bags to go to the city composting site.  It's not actually all that bad in the end (although the task isn't finished, so I should bite my tongue a little bit). In fact, I was enjoying using my wellington boots to such good purpose.  

There's more!

The mystery yellow flower in the front that the painters did their utmost to do in when they folded it in half but bloomed anyway ... remember that one?

Apparently the miracles never cease around here because it's blooming again.  I wish I knew what it was so that I could plant lots of them.

Still at it

Well, believe it or not, the garden is still going.  The Americans have had time to actually make history since last I posted and there are still blooms.  

Not many, mind you.

The Zinnias, which were still going beautifully last Thursday (Sept 30) are now well and truly done.  

I don't know when they were done in because unfortunately I didn't look at that bit of the garden for a few days.  It was very cold over the weekend, though.  I don't think it really got below zero, but it did get close to it.  

The marigolds, having soldiered on through so much, gave up the ghost over the weekend, too. 
As with the zinnias, I don't know when they perished, only that they were going on Thursday and then not on Tuesday.  

But ... the gazanias are still blooming.  I really thought that they were a flower that needed a hot, sunny climate to survive.  Obviously, these guys are not absolutely thriving in the sub 10C weather, but they're blooming!
Even better, they're still producing buds.  It's like they think they'll be blooming for another week or something.  

The weather has been milder this week than it was over the weekend, but I can't believe it's going to last forever.  Somehow, it feels like it already has!  

In less gardening-goddess news, those are the un-raked leaves in the backgrounds of these shots.  The leaf-raking is a serious problem.  Normally, I like to let the leaves sit on the beds during the winter (I can't possibly get enough out of my xmas tree to cover the whole garden) but this year our maple has tar spot disease and the leaves can carry it so they have to go.  This means that I need need NEED to get out there with bags and a rake and resolve.  I did have an honest go at the back deck over the weekend, but I just filled up our compost bin and then had nowhere to dump the unwanted leaves.  So they linger. 

It's worse because my lovely neighbour does rake and all of my un-raked leaves just make his life more difficult.  They actually make his life very difficult by blocking the sewer grate at the corner which apparently is all that's required to make a puddle so large that it flows into his basement.  I've never seen said puddle in my own basement and I'm a little confused that such a thing could be possible (given how much closer to the grate I am than he is) but I hate to think that my negligence might cause him trouble.  Anyway, it's a task for this weekend, which is threatening rain.  

I wish it were still light in the evenings so that I might contemplate gardening after work.  I'm not enough into winter routines to contemplate gardening before work.  It's a form of (tea-fuelled) miracle that the pictures above got taken this morning.