Time to get rid of the pumpkins

Winter has come early this year. Here are the jack-o-lanterns, even more scary now that the mould has set in, but out of place in the new snowy landscape. Snow has covered everything, and it looks like the kind that is here to stay. But white snow reflects light, and it's a lot brighter than gray rain and cloudy days.

Here's what Avery the cat thinks about the cold:

He is actually outside a lot in the winter. When the snow gets too deep, he appreciates it when we shovel off the deck so he can get some fresh air. I've also seen him jumping from one deep footprint to another to avoid being buried in the deep snow.

Life persists

It's been raining like crazy every day for a week, and we noticed that water coming off the roof was not running though the evestrough but right over the side. Today the sun shone fitfully, and I prodded my husband Wayne to check out the situation, with the promise that I wouldn't make him do anything else for the rest of the day. (A hard promise to keep!)
He climbed to the top of the ladder only to discover a weed growing out of the seam of a tubular evestrough!
After much unscrewing of sections of evestrough, he discovered the insides were packed full of dead leaves, evergreen needles, and bits of roof. It had decomposed into lovely dark compost that was fertile territory for this weed.
And of course the compost was blocking the rain from going down where it needed to go.
I felt a bit of a pang as I dug out the weed and tossed it away. Against all odds, this plant sprang from a seed that just happened to end up in a section of sealed evestroughing that separated enough to provide some light. This is a pretty inhospitable enviroment, even for a weed. Yet after this brave effort, it is still at our mercy. It's not easy being green.

Heidi and the beanstalk

While cleaning up the garden, I picked the dry pods hanging from the scarlet runner beans. These beans are just beautiful - shiny black with pink edges. I'm going to save them to plant in the spring. With beans these pretty, I'm not surprised Jack traded his cow for them.

Here is some kind of mushroom I found by my raspberry patch. I've never seen this particular kind in my garden before.
They definitely don't look good enough to eat.

Mystery birds

Every afternoon around 5:00 for the past 2 weeks, a flock of these birds has landed on a tall dead pine at the back of the garden. I have counted up to 9 at once. They are a bit smaller than a crow, grey with stripes, and I often see them rubbing their heads on branches. The most amazing thing about them is the noise they make. It's like being in a pet store. Trills, whistles, croaks - it sounds like finches and parrots and canaries all at once. I would love to know what they are - any suggestions?

Glorious Glads

I always considered gladiolas as funeral flowers - the sprays of white glads were a fixture in every funeral arrangement. But when I started growing them myself, I was fascinated. Glads have a very interesting way of reproducing. The small flat bit under the pink one is the corm I planted in the spring. The corm flattens and puts its energy into growing a new bulb on top, which sprouts and produces a lovely spray of flowers. The one in the picture is quite unusual, because it has produced a new bulb on each side, each of which will also sprout new flowers next year. Most corms produce tiny bulbils (second picture) around the roots. If these fall off and take root, they will grow to full size in a few years. Even though they are considered zone 7, glads survive in the ground over winter in my zone 6b garden. I take them out in the fall anyways, because I like to put them in a new place every year. And besides, I love seeing what they have been up to!

making room for new flowers

When I want to buy new plants (which is a big weakness of mine) I don't have room to put them anywhere. If anything, I should be weeding out plants to make my garden less messy looking, more controled. But the plants keep reproducing and I feel like a murderer when I destroy a plant. Instead, I make more beds. My newest bed started as three clumps of hosta. I had a mad impulse to make a new bed because a new peony arrived by mail order, and I had no place to put it.





Instead of weeding my present beds, I decided to start digging. After much huffing and puffing, I had a bed. Shapes aren't usually hard to design, but this time I wanted a straight back so It would be easier to mow. That left me with no ideas of how to shape the rest of it. The bed ended up looking like boot, which is pretty bad. In the end, I just expanded it to an oval 11 feet by 6. Unimaginative, but it will look good once it's full of new plants.
Next spring, it will be full of bulbs and perennials, and I will be looking for more space to grow!

The colours and critters of fall

Fall is a time when plants slowly come to a stop. The annuals are on the brink of dying, and the perennials are losing their leaves, preparing for a long winter's sleep. But before they go, they put on quite a show.
Staghorn sumac is unsurpassed for fall colour. I call it the poor man's japanese maple. It's the first tree to show its colours. As a kid, I used to press sumac leaves between the pages of a book, hoping to hang on to those sunset reds and oranges forever. Like the expensive, often winter killed Japanese maple, it's a small tree which can become artfully twisted or arched, but it's as tough as nails and free, if you dig one up from the wild or are lucky enough to have it appear on your property.






My zebra grass has been in my garden for many years, and has bloomed for the first time ever. Shining silvery seed heads move with every puff of wind.




Meanwhile, a single ladybug clings to a seed head of feather reed grass, hoping to find a spot of cosy leaf litter to spend the winter.





And a dark-eyed junco feasts on the seeds of liatris and rudbeckia. Birds don't sit still and pose like plants and bugs do, so it's much more of a challenge to get a good shot. I'll keep trying, though. It's certainly worth it.