Finally, the leaves have all been rounded up, shredded to a point and layered on the flower beds. *oof* (There IS a downside to living in what realtors described as "a park-like setting" with "mature trees".) LOL
But with the new bee beds all those leaves are going to good use. Previously I would just mulch around the house (foundation beds), keep a small heap to use in the winter compost pile and then PAY someone to haul away the rest.
No more of that!
Now I have enough new beds to use every single leaf. In fact, at one point, I was afraid I would not have ENOUGH leaves to adequately mulch the ring bed. But I squeaked by with just enough left over to use in the winter compost pile.
Here's a pic of 4 tucked-in beds: ring, stump, arbor and maple bed.
The bird bath bed:
The privacy bed (which looks really really naked without those gigantic castor bean plants in front of it).
A poor pic of the veg bed:
And, finally, a stitched-together panoramic shot of the whole ring bed. I have not cut back the tall butterfly bushes so I'll have something to look at over winter. But back there the blue salvia and native asters are still blooming away. Yesterday I showed some friends around and we were amazed at the number of bees on the asters. We could actually hear humming, there were so many. I spied honeybees, green metallic bees (sweat bees) and what looked like mason bees (would they still be active this time of year?). It was quite a show - and very rewarding.
Finally, and officially, I'm done with winter prepping garden beds, leaf management, and (hopefully) lawn mowing. That's my story and I'm sticking to it! (Although if this nice weather keeps up I may be having to mow into December! *ack*).
Oh, I may wander out and cut back the occasional perennial stalk or remove the (now yellow) hosta leaves, etc., but that is just puttering - no brainers. *sigh* That's about all I can handle now. After all, by this end of the growing season, there's just not much brain left. ;-D
Even though we had a cold September with early frosts & freezes, November (so far) as been one heck of an Indian summer. Lovely mild days (sometimes near 70!) has encouraged me to go the 'extra mile' when it comes to Fall projects. And I'm not the only one who seem to be over-achieving right now....
Take, for instance, the Robinson crabapple I posted about earlier. Remember how surprised I was to find it blooming in September? Those blooms actually set fruit (see pic). And now, two months later in mid-November, that branch is blooming again! I've never seen the like. I hope it's not an indication of some tree disease or danger to it.
These warm days actually motivated me to address the problem of weeds in the ring bed. I had gotten so caught up with other chores that on nice days I found myself out there pulling weeds just to be outside in the good weather. Good grief!! Most of the perennials have pretty much shut down due to the many freezes we've had, but some are either holding their own and actually excelling at this time of year.
The "Blue Bedder" perennial salvia still sport new flower stalks. These things have bloomed all summer from this season's WS'd seeds. I'll definitely start more of these blue beauties next year.
The native asters have been blooming for 7 weeks now and going like gangbusters. They seem to laugh at nighttime temps that dip into the 20s. I have an 8-foot strip of these along the far side of the ring and show off as a dusty blue mass of petals. I'm going to collect seeds and plant perhaps another 30-40 feet of aster on that far side of the ring. Who wouldn't want a couple of months of color like this late in the year? And the bees? Oh yes, the bees are on those blossoms. (Sorry the pic is blurry, but click on it and you'll see a more focused pic.)
In Fall there is lots of bird activity as flocks of over-winterers or passers-through visit the feeders and birdbaths.
I love crows.
And no one loves a bath more than a robin. Unless it's a bunch of robins. At one point 10-12 birds where splashing in the bath with more waiting around in the Japanese maple nearby.
Of course here at Melissa Majora we cater to the entire food chain. Here our resident (and magnificent) female red-tailed hawk keeps tab on all the lesser critters....
There are still leaves to gather/shred and use as mulch, but, bottom line, I'm pretty much done outside. I still have some deck furniture that needs to be stored in the shed but with weather like this - and the arbor rebuild - you can be sure I'm still using it on a daily basis. ;-D
In a previous post I mentioned that I'd spent a good deal of this summer rebuilding the arbor over the deck. It was a long process and turned out to be just another example of me biting off almost more than I could chew.
But chew I did!
Today was dark and dreary, too wet to rake leaves, so instead I sorted through dozens and dozens of digital photos and put together a pic-heavy post for the Garden Project page. You might pop over there and check it out.
After all, what good are lovely gardens and beds if you don't have a nice vantage point from which to enjoy the view!
Oh good grief! I cannot believe that it has been WEEKS since I've posted. My bad... At one point I was poised to do a nice entry about the Autumnal Equinox and the waning of the growing season. Then it just slipped away as I dove into 'winterizing' the gardens and grounds.Then I was going to post about finishing reconstructing the deck arbor after 2 months of deconstruction, timber reclamation, wood protecting, arbor redesign and rebuild. But it was hard to get me to come in from outside where I was totally enjoying actually sitting under the arbor. LOLThen I was going to post about the success of the left-over WS'd plants at my Mom's neighborhood garage sale. The English lavender, Canterbury bells, butterfly bushes, balloon flowers and bellflowers (not WS'd).Then I absolutely was going to post about what was still blooming at this late date and providing late forage for bees and pollinators. And, by gum, I'm not letting that one get away from me!
First off, the native asters (pic) are just coming into their own blue glory. (OK, bluish-purple glory.)
The green metallic bees are obviously finding them yummy and as recent as 2 days ago cabbage butterflies were visiting them.
The blue lobelia (lobelia siphilitica - pic) is blooming away and I think this particular bumblebee just lives there anymore. LOL
Other WS'd perennials that are still blooming and attracting pollinators are:
Blue Bedder salvia
Feverfew (honestly, not so much traffic all season on this one)
Lavender hyssop
"Apricot Sprite" hyssop
Butterfly bush
Sweet Joe Pye weed
"Tall Boneset" Joe Pye weed
English lavender
Coneflower (echinacia tennesseensis)
Cardinal flower (lobelia cardinalis)
"Dwarf Munstead" lavender (pic)
And, as the pic at the top of this post, the WS'd annuals of Yvonne's salvia and 6-8 varieties of zinnias are still going gangbusters.
And, lordy, let's not forget those scary castor bean plants. In spite of being hit with a couple of early light frosts, those things are putting out NEW flower stalks. What's THAT all about??
One thing I've noticed this season is that bees (all types) seem to prefer blue flowers. Big, small, doesn't seem to matter. Blue blooms get the most traffic. So I'll be adding more blue next year. (NEXT year? Oh man, I'm not done with THIS year yet! Hold my horses, Nellie! LOL)
I'm continuing the 'garden surprise' theme on this post because, well, there have been more surprises! ;-D
First off, we had a couple days of very high winds, gusts that even toppled over those 3 pots in the pic above. But the castor beans rode it out! I watched those things dance back and forth for hours, but none of them snapped. After that I did notice that the stems (actually trunks now) were starting to deform from their own weight, so I lent a little support by bungee-ing them to the fence frame behind them. (See, the frame really was a set of stakes for the castor beans after all!)
By the way - those plants (which I might mention are only 4 months old from germination!!) are now blowing past the 13 FOOT MARK!
Here's another surprise I found yesterday. I was gazing out the front bedroom window and noticed a spot of color on the Robinson crabapple I installed last Fall. (But it got re-installed early mid-June this year. Deer had nibble off all the branches heading away from the house and all the rest were heading toward it. Can't have that. So I dug it up and rotated it 180 degrees.)
It didn't seem to mind at all, although it must have gotten a little dizzy due to that spin around. Here it is - blooming away at the end of branch.
Here's a great surprise. One of the packs of gift seeds I received from a gal from the GardenWeb Winter Sowing forum was Lobelia Cardinalis (cardinal flower). I got great WS germination and have planted clumps all around the place and gave away probably just as many. The hummers LOVE the tall red flower spikes.
So the other day I was out in the Arbor garden doing some deadheading and was taken aback to see a shaft of bright BLUE in the middle of a clump of red (cardinal flowers and red salvias). Whoa!! It was a lobelia - but Lobelia Siphilitica - blue lobelia). Apparently a stray seed ended up in the wrong seed pack! And while it seems only the hummer enjoys the cardinal flowers, it's the native bees that are all over this blue beauty. :-D Hopefully it'll still have time before frost to set seed so I can germinate more next year.
And lookee here. Just a couple of days ago I posted on the Propagation Page that I did not believe the WS'd native asters would bloom this year and here they are. Well, I guess a single blossom doesn't actually constitute a 'they', but I'm seeing more buds now so soon they will be 'them' in no time. LOL
And as a followup to the previous post, here is the last apricot daylily bloom that greeted me this morning. It still just amazes me - a daylily not only reblooming, but so late in the season.
I'm beginning to believe that plants actually have personality, and seem to enjoy keeping the gardener on their toes. You just never know what's going to happen next.... LOL I'll keep an eye out and continue to keep talking to them. But the day they talk back...well...now THAT'll be some post!
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(This entry was originally posted 9/7 and this update to it is posted on 9/15:
Amy over at Tales of a Transplanted Gardener (a great blog, BTW), tagged me with a Meme award (see her comment to the original post). Thank you, Amy, for your thoughtfulness. And while this initial post actually revealed 7 things about myself (before tagged and asked to do so), I must respectfully decline the award. Why?
Here, then, is a bonus revelation about myself: I'm writing this blog not for personal accolades, but to, in some small part, encourage awareness of the plight of native bees, pollinators and other garden critters. My goal is to write entries that are informative and (I hope) entertaining. (Stick around for the jokes...;-D)
Sometimes a bit of information about animals or insects allows us to see them in a new light, as part of a bigger process. Sometimes just a few *tweeks* in our gardens can result in a big difference in the life of some beleaguered (or beloved) creature.
So, thanks again, Amy. If anything, you and the other readers of this blog (and comments) are all the reward I could hope to get out of this project. Thank you all....)
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It's not because I can be outside all hours of the day, all days of the year. I'm continually drawn to the open air and sunshine, so, sure, this is one of the reasons I garden.
Also I'm an 'antsy' sort of person and don't enjoy just sitting down when I could be walking around and futzing at something. Gardens make a good target for futzing. So that's another reason why I garden.
It's not because I feel good about providing forage for all kinds of creatures (some common, some in trouble): bees, butterflies, moths, skippers, hummingbirds, wasps, birds, nectar flies, preying mantises, toads, squirrels, hawks.... The list is getting pretty long. :-D And it is one of the reasons I garden.
It's not because I can grow tasty, organic fruits and vegetables - especially varieties that (thankfully) don't ship well, thus making them a real treat when they are available. So that is one of the reasons.
It's not because I can meet and share gardening plants and process with other folks who enjoy the same passion for creating beauty using plants. But this is certainly one of the reasons.
And it's not because I can renew my relationship with Nature, the Earth and the Cosmos through the daily dance between myself and other living things that grow or visit my gardens. But boy, that is way up on the reason list.
No. My very BEST reason I garden is because of things like this:
Yes, it's a nice apricot colored daylily. Not much excitement there. I had these at my old house for 5 years and brought them here to this house 7 years ago. They are lovely and dependable bloomers, usually between July 4th and the end of the month. They did that this year, just like the plum daylillies. Then they all died down and the leaves browned. I enjoyed them in their turn, then moved on to other plants that now needed to be tended. If I thought of the daylillies at all it was to envision them next year in their new digs behind the privacy fence.
But imagine my surprise this morning when, sipping my coffee on the deck, I looked out and saw an unexpected pop of color in the Arbor garden. Wha...? I jumped up to investigate, not even bothering to get out of my slippers and into garden clogs due to the heavy dew. Wet feet be damned, I just HAD to see what this was!
And there it was. A full stalk of 6-8 apricot buds, 2 of them wide open to the grey Labor Day morning. Just blooming away as if it was no big deal.
So THIS is the BEST reason I garden. The constant SURPRISE of a garden.
If my hobby was stamp collecting or knitting or sculpting or collecting something the one thing you could COUNT on is that however you LEFT things at the end of the day, it would surely be the SAME way when you came back to it. The 3 cent stamps would still be 3 cents, the sleeve would still be the same length, the sculpture would have just as many arms as you expected and your collection of something would not have changed. But in GARDENING you just don't know WHAT's gonna happen when you're not looking.
And most of the time -- to our knowledge or to our senses -- there is not always a good explanation as to WHY some things happen. All I know is how much I LOVE surprises and take huge delight when they DO happen. :-D
The privacy bed (which looks really really naked without those gigantic castor bean plants in front of it).
And, finally, a stitched-together panoramic shot of the whole ring bed. I have not cut back the tall butterfly bushes so I'll have something to look at over winter. But back there the blue salvia and native asters are still blooming away. Yesterday I showed some friends around and we were amazed at the number of bees on the asters. We could actually hear humming, there were so many. I spied honeybees, green metallic bees (sweat bees) and what looked like mason bees (would they still be active this time of year?). It was quite a show - and very rewarding.
Finally, and officially, I'm done with winter prepping garden beds, leaf management, and (hopefully) lawn mowing. That's my story and I'm sticking to it! (Although if this nice weather keeps up I may be having to mow into December! *ack*). 
