What have you done today in the Garden?

That is serious gardening, Mel.
Yeah— is potato. Too right.
Don’t those onion strings look good. Your man did a great job.

 

Did a lot of care taking today. To pooped to explain..

 

Finished planting the wallflowers along the path and cut back some of the Snapdragons, there's 2 colours that are unique so I've taken some cuttings and put them in water.
Here are the colours

 

Wow Melody!! Major work there. Best wishes for your new garden.
I also hope your husband continues to improve.

And! I love the look of those onion ropes with the laundry in they background. A gardener's still life! And the ceiling on your porch? (what is it exactly?) is beautiful. Rather Japanese like.

 

You are very kind and sweet CM. Thank you. You have given me all new love and appreciation for our simple tin roof over rough cut two by six beams. The portion in the photo must not have included the cob webs that like to hang on like Gorilla Glue to the rough beams. The joy of it is that I don't mind smashing the odd nail into it here and there when convenient....like for Onions or chimes.

 

The frost turned to a freeze last night. A little unexpected -2 C. Enough to have a skim of ice on the bird bath on the deck. The squash did okay in the cold frame green house, but barely. Tonight I will put a quilt over them. The Zucchini are done now, as well as the lettuce. The lettuce will bounce back but be very bitter.

Any tomato that looked interested in turning red came to the house today. It looks like my lows will be low again tonight then hover around 8 for a while. Maybe the green guys will ripen in time for my daughter to come visit at the end of Sept. If not, everyone will come in to ripen. She is a tomato lover and is excited to have some fresh ones. I'd love to have a box for her if possible.

The frost trick I have, is if I can catch a plant before the sunlight hits it, and water it with very cold water, sometimes it will survive. It was a bit of a race this morning to water the strawberries. We shall see if they make it. Our well is over 200 ft deep and the water is cold, so hopefully.



As soon as the sunlight touches it, it turns to dew. But this is also when a leaf is damaged. Too warm too fast.




Hopefully the Phlox contiue to open. They are a little frosty.

 

Stunning bi-colours.
Good luck with them, Loggie.

Those phlox look great. Are you enjoying your last blooms a lot? All that frostyness is disappointing to see. Haha—I’m not ready for winter yet.

 

Thank you Sjoerd

 

@Logan The wallflowers are beautiful. They remind me of snap dragons. Almost like little orchids.

 

Thank you @Melody Mc.

 

I am enjoying the last flowers - thanks Sjoerd. It is like anything lovely when we know is soon coming to an end...we savour. I am hoping in the next week to have the time to post the photos of the rest of the flowers from the summer. Before winter is here and it feels weird.

Are you still getting tomatoes?

 

Yes indeed Mel. They are waning, to be sure but i am still harvesting and in fact today I shall make more concentrate.

 

More "housekeeping"
Cleaned all sixteen of the pot movers today. As they had a dab of silicone over a small hole in the centre, they retained water and gunge.
Now they're clean and the silicone removed so the roses won't be sitting in water through the winter. I took the castors of the movers in the Spring so the pots didn't blow over too easily in strong winds, but i've left them off as I don't move them around much and they slide easily. The half dozen on the first patio I left the castors on as I do need to move them occasionally, but they are more sheltered near the house so the wind isn't a problem.


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Pruned off a lot of blackspot infected foliage on some of the roses. We've still a few roses to flower, if an early frost doesn't get them
I'll give them a spray with Sulphur Rose tomorrow and a few sprays during the winter, including the pots.




Gave the phlox on the rockery a bit of a trim where it was cascading too far over the rocks onto the rose patio.
More wisteria pruning.

Mowed the lawn, it has nearly completely recovered from the dry spell. I'll give it a dose of cheap lawn food in a couple of days.

Gave the little acer at the bottom of the garden another trim. Keeps putting out new growth.




Gave this acer palmatum Taylor a bit of a haircut to make it a more balanced shape.

I reckon it'd be happier out of the pot and in the ground, but there's no vacant spaces.




Need to jet wash the patio and do a bit of re-pointing, but I keep putting it off.

 

Today went to see my friend and planted some wallflowers, forget me nots and foxglove plants. I got her to do some weeding but she has to be careful with her bad shoulder.

 

I s'ppose you could call it gardening of a sort.

Twenty-four years ago when I bought our first Honda CRV, I moved the right-hand gate pillar eighteen inches to the right, to make it easier to back in.
I had some York stone left over from when I built the koi pool, patio and path, so I made another path to the side of the concrete drive, so I wouldn't be treading on the grass when I got out of the car.

Over time this path had weathered, well at least the mortar between the York stone had and I was always having to prise weeds out of it.
So today after cutting the lawn I decided to re-point it.
I'd run out of plasticiser, so I used the bricky's standby, washing up liquid. Well, not actually that as we've a dishwasher so we had none, so I used neat car wash liquid. I did have some yellow cement dye.

Anyway, job sorted. It's difficult to get a professional finish with a pointing trowel when none of the pieces of stone are regular and if you rarely do any "brickying." My solution is to do it as best I can with a trowel, then go over it with a fine 2" dry paintbrush. If you don't make the mortar too wet it works fine.

The mortar will dry lighter and the staining on the York stone will weather in a few weeks.

Like our first one, I've had this car from new. It was seventeen years old this year, but it's only done 62,000 miles. As everything on it works I can't be bothered to change it.