Fall Glory

It is really beautiful in the fall, even though things are dying and other things are shedding their leaves to prepare for winter.

There is much work to be done, digging the cannas is a huge task, as is cutting back the stalks and stems and then pushing them through the chipper/shredder. Some years we burn things, but when it is possible we prefer to shred them so we don't pump a bunch of smoke into the air. 40 years of asthma makes Bill sensitive to particulates.

Even with the diminishment and death that is going on, the colors are beautiful and the afternoon light in the fall is gorgeous. Most of these photos were taken a week or so ago, but I'm just now getting around to writing. This is a busy time away from home, and then there is so much to do here in the few hours we have.

Yesterday and Saturday we had a charitable event to work on, and spent probably a total of 12 hours since quitting work on Friday. But we also had to dig the cannas, cut down and shred tons of spent perennials, cut the lawn, haul a bunch of ceramic pots to the garage, clean up dead plants below the bedroom, outside of the atrium, in the kitchen garden, along the vegetable garden, in the evergreen garden. Also, used up the leftover herbicide on the last of the flourishing weeds, cut down the sunflowers, and a multitude of other small tasks.

But it is beautiful out in the yard and I love being out there even when I am dead tired.

5 days away and what a difference...

We left for a conference last Wednesday and left the yard well tended and in the care of neighbors. It never fails to amaze me how much and how fast things grow at this time of year. In the winter we can go weeks with no real change, but in June things change almost before your eyes, and certainly a great deal is different when you go away for 5 days and come back.



When we left we had just gotten everything planted and settled in. Now it seems to be well established. The tiny rabbits that seem to be all over the yard are consuming things every day, but even they can't keep up with the amount of growth that is going on.When we got back the grass needed cutting, and I had a pretty full day dragging the compost container around the yard and filling it over and over with the spent flowers of the columbine, the fully blooming flowers of the lambs ears that needed to be removed before they set seed, and various other things gone past their prime. Almost all the tulips are ready to be plucked out, the terrible weeds are few and easily identifiable.



A technique that I use to identify the weeds easily is possibly indicative of my personality: I scan the garden I'm working on and hope to find perfection. Inevitably, something that just isn't right sticks out and becomes all I can see. It is usually a weed, and I can take care of it. This tendancy leads me to be pulling and cutting out weeds pretty much any time I walk around the garden seeking perfection that is never quite there. But it serves me well in getting closer and closer.

Light at the End of the Tunnel?

A whole week has gone by and it has been cold and back to "early spring" weather. Snow has fallen several times, and cold rain on most of the other days. But the creek never really rose into the yard, and even the secondary channel wasn't too terrible. They say that the temps will be rising and it will be dry for the next week. That should REALLY bring the green. Even with the cold, the shoots of grass are beginning to poke through the old dead layer. Not the dramatic green that I love, but enough so that the real transformation will occur very quickly once the days warm up.

Either the fish have been hiding beneath the water lily or something has captured and eaten them. Haven't seen any for the whole week.

Today we drove out to make a bid on an old card catalog at a small library 35 miles west. It was snowing, but the roads weren't slippery, and grey but pretty. Then we took some back roads to my sister's house to wish her a happy birthday. On the way we say a huge flock of swans in a field. I've heard that they stop there or near there every year on their migration from southern US to northern Canada. Haven't seen them there before. A couple miles further down the road brought a huge rafter of wild turkeys in another field. And then, a bit later, a domestic herd of buffalo. Add those to the usual Canada geese, gulls, crows, numerous hawks hunting from trees, guys fishing in the flooded Wolf River, and we had quite the viewing day.

Once home, Bill made some repairs to the low voltage lighting fixture out by the willow, we replaced the windshield wipers on my car, and then did a short walk around the cold wet yard. This photo is from the culvert above the creek near Sunnyview Road. I've take a photo from this place many times over the period that we've lived here and it amazes me how much things have changed. One of these days I'll try to find an historic series of them for the blog.