Better Late Than Never?

I FINALLY got out and winterized my garden as best I could in freezing temps and frozen ground. I thought I could find some mulch or compost somewhere, but no luck. Oh, Home Depot had tons of it, but it was all outside and frozen solid. Luckily, Dave had shredded all the leaves in the lawn and they weren't frozen, so those were used a nice cover.

I had to rearrange some of my rose collars this year due to the new rose bushes. In other words, I just had to get a little creative, with Dave's help. The crown of the rose is what needs protection. I put the plastic collars around the plants and fill them with shredded leaves, mulch or compost. This year, it's shredded leaves.

Hopefully we'll have SOME snow (not as much as last year please!) so there will be good insulation. Two years ago, there was a lot of winter damage due to so little snow.

I have so many new perennials and uncovering them next spring should be a real, real treat!!!

Oh and by the way, the new Johnny's Selected Seeds catalog is out there! Better get your copy soon! I think it looks great this year if I do say so myself...and, I will! :-)

Fall Clean-Up

Last weekend, on a very brisk, chilly day, I pulled up my annuals and trimmed up some of the perennials. This last week was almost 55 every day, so it stayed relatively warm (for Maine in November!) and I didn't want to cover my roses just yet.

It's always a little sad to see dead or dying flowers and this day was no exception. Poor morning glories....poor roses....poor snapdragons. LOL Overall, I was very pleased with my garden this year. I have so many new plants, I hope I remember where they all are next spring and don't assume they're dead annuals and pull them out!! I have markers for most of them, but if they survive the winter that'll be a different story.

I'll "insulate" the entire garden with a good layer of shredded leaves. It rained quite a bit last week, so I fear getting dry leaves may be an issue, which isn't good, but we'll see.

I have a few more roses bushes than I did previously and not sure I'll have enough of my plastic rose collars to go around. I'll cut them back, wrap the collars around them and fill them with leaves. I've lost a couple of bushes over the years, but this treatment seems to work okay....especially if we get snow. If it's a dry, cold winter...not good.

Tiny Swiss Chard Harvest

Well, it wasn't much, but it was a harvest of our Bright Lights swiss chard. I haven't watered the garden in ages, nor had the time and energy to really "tend" to it at all while getting next year's 2009 catalog completed.

So, this was another pleasant surprise to harvest a small bunch of swiss chard and enjoy it with our ham dinner this evening. I'll try to do better next year as I still have some seed of Bright Lights.

Miracle Nasturtiums!

I had given up on these beauties, thinking they just weren't getting enough sun. And, perhaps they weren't out in the deck planter. But they certainly are doing well now! Must be the angle of the sun in the sky or the lack of foliage on some of the trees now. I was shocked to discover these beautiful flowers on the OTHER side of the trellis in the planter. They face the stream, so I hadn't even noticed. What a pleasant surprise to some some of the Trailing Nasturtium Mix from Johnny's Selected Seeds sending up such beautiful flowers. I planted them very late in the season too.