Winter Garden Pleasure

The winter birds are what pulls us out into the garden when everything is white. Chickadee's are always happy to land on Miles when he takes out the seed.

Hibernating Green Thumb

My green thumb hibernates. I have no success with indoor plants. I have tried many, only to be forced to admit that my gardening enthusiasm does not extend to indoor plants. I know this is why I never have any success. I can rattle off requirements for sun, water, location and staking for a good number of garden perennials as well as a smaller number of annuals without much effort. Yet inside, I have had this Amaryllis for over a year now and although it is getting leaves, I do not have a lot of hope for blooms. I think I was supposed to feed it in March or May. For some reason, an M month is ringing bells. I fed it a couple of weeks ago, in an N month and only after it sent leaves up. If it blooms, it won't be on my account. It would he a happy accident though so I am keeping my fingers crossed. I plan to move no houseplants. If the Amaryllis bloom, they will become Christmas gifts for others. I am going to keep my growing activities confined to the garden where my real interest is. As it turns out, I like hibernating through the winter break as much as the plants do.

Hope for Seven

This is the orange lily garden. My hope is that there is at least one of each of seven different lily varieties that were in that garden. I have no idea if it really does. Bets anyone?

Another day of digging in snow but I managed to get the red lily garden and pink lily garden dug. I think I only missed 'Acapulco' and 'Opus One' which can be a nice surprise for the new gardener. There are only four lily left to get and it is mostly because I forgot them until I had my boots off and the -5 temperature was not encouraging me to put them back on! I will get them tomorrow with tulips. I am worried I am not going to find a lot of the tulips. Some are marked but most are not and finding the lily under the snow was not easy eventhough they had dead stalks sticking up. Not always where the bulb was unfortunately. I am still going to try though.  Then Iris. There is an end in sight although everytime I go out, I think of something else I want to take. Today's addition to the list was Cerastium. I am running out of time though, if we don't get warmer daytime temperatures, the ground will be too frozen to dig in only a few more days.

Fall Moving

Here I am again, digging while paying no attention to the proper timing of anything. The only thing on my mind is that I am moving in either the spring or the summer and I want to keep my bulbs and tubers. So, I am digging in the snow and packing boxes to mail to Linda. I am sending glads for her 'fridge in case I am not there yet when it is time to plant them.

I dug up my orange lily garden today and although it is all mixed together, I hope this pile of bulbs contains 'Grand Cru', 'Cancun', Danielle's Hula, Early Orange and Tiny White as well as the Tangerine and Easter Yellow shorter varieties.

I managed to separate out the 'New Wave', 'Landini', 'Orange Electric' and 'Madrid'. I started packing the first box although I think there will be three this size before I am done!

Linda and Kelly will dig trenches or something to throw them in until I get there and I won't have to try and dig frozen ground in early spring here. Tomorrow the agenda is to dig all the pink and red lily. I hope the nicer afternoon temperatures hold for a few more days because I would like to get tulips and iris too :)

November Blooms

Mid-November and we still have lots of blooms (or re-blooms) in the garden:  this masterwort, honeysuckle, daisies, snap dragons, roses, dahlias, gaura, bugleweed, heather, daylilies, lobelia, lamium...

Soon to be Mulch

We make a lot of use out of all the leaves.  We shred lots and use as mulch in the garden.  Piles of them get composted every year and eventually find their way into the garden.  After 3 days of constant rain, we're going to have to wait for them to dry out.  The other nice thing is that, with so many trees around, the garden gets an extra layer of mulch for the winter without any extra effort.



Warm Weather Fall

Since the snowfall and frost, we have had a spell of warmer weather move in. All of the snow is gone and I have been able to get into the garden again. Today I was using the extra gardening time to empty, clean and sort containers. All the black plastic ones will be used to move plants in the spring. I am keeping my fingers crossed that this weather continues for another week but in this zone, that is always a question in November.

Long Gardening Season

This fall is a strange one in our garden.  We have yet to have our first frost so, on November 1st, we still have dahlias and glads blooming.  Since the spring gardening season started about 3 weeks earlier than usual this year, this is definitely the longest gardening season we've experienced.  The sumac above is a bright flash at the back of the garden.  Kelly's Huron Sunrise grass is a similar colour.  This year I didn't cut back any of my Oriental lily stalks and I love all the extra gold in the garden.