Putting everything to bed for the fall and winter. Restoring rock tumble walls, mulching, etc. With the help of God I'll still be around to enjoy it another spring.
Posted on 10/01/2025 5:23:58 AM PDT by Diana in Wisconsin
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Lovely. I saw my first yellow tree of the fall yesterday. MA is running VERY slow in changing colors this year.
Good Morning, Puppers! :)
Great haul! :)
The only ‘gardening’ I did today was deciding which outside potted plants are going to ‘make the cut’ and move inside for the winter. The winners?
Bay Laurel Tree
White Geranium
ONE Rosemary plant - the best of three
The other two Rosemary plants will be scrapped for parts, LOL! I also cut a huge hank of Chives yesterday and they are cut up and drying on a plate. The whole kitchen smells like Chives right now.
This evening we are going to an annual Fundraiser for Breast Cancer. One of two clubs we belong to sponsors it. There is a Bench Show (Dog Show) and a Treeing Competition and then a hunt, tonight. Women Handlers Only. (We are NOT associated with the Susan G. Komen people at all!)
We call it, ‘Hounding for a Cure’ and I was in charge of three Raffle Baskets which were really fun to pull together. The food is always good and Hallie keeps the club meeting SHORT. I really love this group of Women Raccoon Hunters. Good People. :)
We had a light frost in low-lying areas this past week. My zinnias bit the dust, and it killed the squash plants. Gardens up the hill where the house is are OK, even the dahlias are fine.
Like you, I am choosing which plants will be in the house for the winter. So far, my collection of clay-potted geranium varieties are coming in. They are in the greenhouse since the predicted cold nights last week.
I kept too many plants last winter (a few kinds of sun-tolerant coleus. 3 lantana colors...) and I don’t want to have such a jungle in the house again.
I have a lot of orchids in the house and there is little space in windows for annuals. I have 18 potted geraniums,,,,, LOL. Too many. Next spring I will give some to my folks for their planters.
Putting everything to bed for the fall and winter. Restoring rock tumble walls, mulching, etc. With the help of God I'll still be around to enjoy it another spring.
Beautiful Fall day; however, I spent it mostly in the kitchen between 10 & 6 PM. My cousin’s mom has been in a hospital (4 of them!) since September 7th. The current hospital is 30 miles away plus my cousin works an hour away from her home. She’s running on fumes trying to keep up with everything. I made dinner for her & her family & delivered it - one less thing for her to deal with today. I also made a big pot (crockpot) of Pasta Fagioli soup for myself while I was working on dinner & dessert. The chilly weather has me craving hearty soups.
60% rain in the forecast for tomorrow. I might try to do some pepper jelly canning in the afternoon after church.
They even look delicious!
Congratulations! I still have too much planting left to do! The water feature needing to be rebuilt has my progress on planting stymied. Most of what I have is supposed to go near the feature, but I can’t plant them until the water feature is finished.
The landscaper is coming back on Monday to begin rebuilding it. It shouldn’t take too long, but it might.
I have discovered there’s an area on the front edge of where the feature is that is still wet and moist to the touch even though we’ve had no rain, and everything around that is dry as a bone. I think it might be some sort of spring? I know other neighbors have them. We were on the road today, but home now. I’ll have to go look at it more closely tomorrow. I wonder what plants might want full sun but like it wet. I wonder if that even exists.
I'll never forget my first meeting with, 'Mrs. Pollock.' (Or your Dad for that matter, LOL!)
I'll be a True Wisconsinite, now: "Tell your Folks I say, 'Hi!'"
Ain’t that the truth! After this slap-dash YUCK of a year, I am SO looking forward to the Planning Phase for next year! :)
“I might try to do some pepper jelly canning in the afternoon after church.”
I’m going to try to ‘fix’ my Pepper Jelly Mistake, today! :)
We grew a varigated one called Wilhelm Languth for many years (spelling probably wrong). That was a very old variety. Now there are a lot more to pick from.
I saved a few varieties of geraniums before they retired, one is called Cherry Brocade, a green/maroon leaf and red/purple flower. Not a strong grower, but very pretty leaves and smaller than normal flower.
I don’t expect to find that at any retail outlet. Even my folks only grew it in hanging baskets for a year or 2.
I found a geranium grower on X who had many unusual varieties, lots of pictures.
Was fun scrolling through their unusual varieties.
Breakfast this morning was an Omelette made from our own home grown Eggs, Cream Cheese from a Wisconsin dairy (Shullsburg Creamery) and Chives snipped from the garden. Homemade Sourdough Bread from my friend Hallie for toast, and homemade V-8 Juice. Life Is Good!
Right now I just have one called 'Pegasus' but he is the Gift that Keeps on Giving! I have made a ton of cuttings off of him to share. He's great in any shady spot, though inside he is in a shaded south-facing window. Just a random pix from the Internet:
No canning going on. I need sugar & the weather is crappy, don’t want to go to the store. We had 25 people tops in church this morning (small country church). Even the organist wasn’t there so one of the church members plinked out the hymns one note at a time on the piano ... very interesting :-)
More rain off & on tonight, lows in the 50’s so not cold. I think more leaves turned after the 39° night Friday - our maples are finally turning red.
Several days ago I was grousing that I should have forced Wally World to honor their $2 for 1 cu. ft. clearance price on raised bed soil They also ran out of the $2 for 1 cu. ft. garden soil on clearance, over a week ago. But we stopped by to pick up a few groceries after church today, and, what do I spot out front of the garden center, but another pallet of the same garden soil. This year it’s been nice “light” soil. I nabbed 6 more bags — only 6 as we had already made a couple other stops, kinda stocking up for the week, and the hatchback would be getting a bit full once those bags of garden soil , were in, as well as a couple bags of Burpee seed starter soil. :-)
Well, the garden soil ran up as $4 per bag at the register, so I “asked” the “help” associate to honor the posted price, and he did.
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On the bad news side of things, we butchered the big black “mutt” rooster who ruled our largest coop / run, last Thursday. (There are 12 hens in there, as well as a bantam mix roo who’d learned to stay clear of the big guy. All was well the last three days, and this morning too, but when we got home from church I discovered that apparently Mr. Ban-mix had torn the crap out of our last (and old) White Leghorn hen while we were in town. She survived and I think she’ll recover, but she has over half her feathers on the ground! I’m assuming the ban-mix wanted to mate, she didn’t, and he wouldn’t take no for an answer. Not being so big, he had trouble quickly overpowering her, but, he IS a quite aggressive bird. :-(
I’m FAIRLY sure no animal got in there, tho’ I suppose I can’t 100% rule out a very small hawk, but, that coop would be hard for such to get in to. Other small predators, say, a juvenile opossum might be able to squeeze in, but would be very unlikely to be “about” during broad daylight. So, I think I can boil it down to we should have boiled Mr. Ban-mix, not the black roo.
For now, I’ll keep the Leghorn in the smaller coop / run with our oldest rooster, who is so old and slow / heavy he can’t effectively chase and mount the hens any more. He just LOOKS like an effective predator deterrent.
If only I could figure out how to get the darn things to grow here...
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