Finally! Cool weather

We finally had a week of fall weather. It coincided with my house-warming party, which went super-well. Twenty of us sat outside in sunny 70 degree weather and talked and laughed and ate. It was a hit.

Yesterday, the family came over and we worked hard on my flower beds. My brothers-in-law pulled out seven stumps. The previous owner had gone along with a chainsaw and sawed off bushes and small trees about six inches above the ground, probably 2 years ago. But he didn't treat any of them, so they all sent up suckers and were quite healthy. Only one--a butterfly bush--was at all interesting to me, so out the ugly ones came.

While they were doing that, my sisters had brought over perennials they'd divided out of their own garden. Hostas from sister #2, who is the master gardener of the group (though we all enjoy it) and from sister #1, day lilies and grape hyacinth. I also spent $200 at Lowe's on soil amendments, perennials, and bulbs. I put in two kinds of daffodils and ranunculus along with the hyacinth in the bed around the big tree. I put in big allium in front of the front windows, which sister #2 said "needed some plants with height." I moved some irises that were in too shady a spot and pulled up more euonymus from those front beds (I hate that stuff and ivy for being nearly impossible to eradicate). We divided a couple of my hostas already in place and rearranged the front beds, taking out the spirea that was there (and which I think died back to nothing because of the hard freezes last year) to move to the side bed.

But it's that side bed that had five stumps that needed removing that excites me the most to work on the rest of the weekend. I need to weed it still, incorporate some peat and cow manure into the soil, and then I'm putting in 10 pots of perennials I have waiting to go in there. Sister #2 will probably bring me more--nepeta and plumbago are two I asked for. Others I'll start from seed this winter, like yarrow. I'm not going to put in much of any one plant until I see what lives and dies, what thrives and what won't even bloom in 2019. So by 2020, I'll have the perennial border in place and probably put in a fruit bush garden as well--blueberries and currants, and possibly strawberries (though they are a lot of hassle for a short season around here, so maybe not.)

The day before that work day, I got a "Pride" award in the mail. There's an organization that is about gardening and neighborhood beautification here. They drive around the whole area in pairs and if a yard looks good (especially if it looks good after looking bad for a few years, which was the case here), they jot down the address and send you an award. So all that moaning about mowing I did? Paid off in that the experts noticed. For the next two years, it should look better and better as I expand the plantings and pull out the other remaining dull stuff, paint the fence, and so on.

"Plant me, already!"

Still to do this fall after that is done: take down 2 dead pines and cut up that wood to burn in fireplace this winter. Get some hardwood to augment that for burning. Get estimates on trimming trees and taking down my (non-fruit-bearing) wild pear, which is shading where I want my bigger veggie garden to go, and on taking down the sweet gum, which will probably cost in the $$thousands, and I'll have to decide if I want to do that or not. (I go back and forth, depending on how many damned balls I have to pick up that week. I hate killing a healthy tree, but I hate the hassle of it.) And possibly I will go ahead and build the raised veggie bed this fall and lay down plastic beneath it to kill the grass there over winter, waiting to get the yards of compost delivered in early spring. Looks like it won't get down to barely freezing until Thanksgiving, if the long-term climate forecast is correct, so I have time to do a lot more.

Mowing, I could do without. But this part having a yard? This is super fun.

Lessons learned

Part of gardening is making mistakes and doing better.

My main lessons with vegetables this year:

1) Bunnies and green beans aren't a good pairing. Will try again next year with a double fence.

2) Bok choi and bugs--another problem pairing. If I want anything in the broccoli family at all, I'll have to spray with Neem Oil often. Or, and this is probably what I'll do, I can buy frozen bags of broccoli at the store instead. It's the only member of the family I outright love.

3) Stake! Tomatoes! More! This was a bizarrely good year for tomatoes here, but my plants were over seven feet tall at one point, and once the fruit begin to grow on stalks like that,  you'd better have a very sturdy trellis system that goes up that far. I'll probably use those metal fence posts and wire pig wire to them good and tight, and then tie the tomatoes up that.

4) Try to plant tomato plants two weeks apart so they don't all come in at once. More cherry tomatoes, fewer big tomatoes.

4) Despite the heat, my compost isn't composting very quickly. It rained twice a week here, but perhaps it needed even more water? I don't know, but the pile of grass clippings and vegetables still looks pretty much like a pile of grass clippings after three months. In the black container, out of the black container, all the same.

Questions still about vegetables:

- How much is enough garden space? I'm tripling next year and will be able to do spring and summer plantings if the weather cooperates.
- At what point will I need to buy a small chest freezer?
- Where can I get cheap soil and compost for a bigger raised bed?

I will plant more perennials with my sisters (they are both dividing their plants and donating to me) at the very end of September.This year, I just went with the things that were here, and only moved some roses. Next year, I'm sure to have some death and disaster among flowers, and more lessons to learn.

tomatoes

today's tomato harvest. I had this many on Wednesday as well.

Tomato sauce time!

I've been in a sun a lot...

So here's a pic of my hair, which gets lighter and sunstreaked the more I'm out in the sun. This is taken indoors, on an overcast day. In the sunlight, it appears blonder. My gray hair continues to fall out more than it stays around.

I have my house-warming party this month, so I'll be getting the yard in as good of shape as I can before that. I'll take pictures when I do.