Preparing for Winter

When the bold branches
Bid farewell to rainbow leaves -
Welcome wool sweaters.
~B. Cybrill

I started tearing down the garden yesterday. On the one hand, it makes me sad, but on the other, we had such a terrible year (garden-wise) that it's almost a relief to pull everything up and get it out of sight.

I think I picked three full-sized tomatoes this year -- off about a dozen plants! And, though we certainly had more cherry tomatoes, there were never more than we could easily snack on in one sitting, and that was from another dozen plants. We should have been swimming in red.

We picked five cucumbers this year, off of eight plants. A few handfuls of beans and peas. The carrots died for no apparent reason. The only thing that produced decently was the squash, which is starting to die now, and I'm not sure why. I'll probably get 4-5 more squash off them before they're gone.

So disappointing. I really wanted to have tomatoes to can this year. And maybe more pickles. Good thing we aren't pioneers, and can go to the store when the garden flops!

Today, I'll finish pulling up what's left, except for the squash which gets to live until it dies on its own. I'll also finish chopping down most of my perennial flowers which are done blooming. All I have left are the fall bloomers: asters and chrysanthemums.

Then I need to do my bulbs -- I want to plant pink daffodils for the spring since the voles and chipmunks have decimated my crocus and grape hyacinth bulbs, and I want something besides yellow. I think there are a few other deer resistant bulbs (which probably means vole-and-'munk resistant), so I need to research that as well.

And then hunker down and get ready for a long, white winter.

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ACK! A bird just flew into my slider -- not hard, but still. We don't have a plain glass one, either. What was it thinking? We had a bat slam into it once a couple winters ago and then land, motionless in the snow on the deck. I couldn't just leave him there, so I donned oven mitts and grabbed a towel, picked it up and put him in the rafters underneath our deck where he'd be safe until he regained all his facilities. I like bats. They are good doobies.

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