Election Day Garden Notes

It’s November and sunflowers are still blooming outside the coffee shop, leaning on a weathered fence.

This one was slightly larger and still showing a bright yellow color.

Here my pot of impatience continue to bloom. Every morning I water it and with the leaf blower, blow off the falling oak leaves. I was going to pull or cut down all the remaining flowers, but I am going to wait for the frost to do this one. Just don’t have the heart.

Wondering what these are? They are shrub protectors. Why you ask? Because the deer had already begun to nibble on the leaves of my Oak Leaf Hydrangeas, that should have already turned red, then shed and the shrub dormant. For most of the summer we kept the deer away with DEER OFF stake stations, and it worked until the effectiveness wore out. They last 6 months. We had placed them all over the gardens, and my hostas and other deer favorites were able to remain whole.

These cages, there are five, easily covered the oak leaf hydrangeas, and have a zippered opening, and we staked them. We already had good winds and they handled it easily. They were not difficult or time consuming to put together either. When done, they collapse into an easy to stored cylinder. The deer also like the regular hydrangea in the row behind, but they were smaller so we purchased bird netting and wooden stakes and installed them as home made cages. There are absolutely no acorns this year, so I think we made a good choice to protect some of the garden’s most vulnerable.

I have 5 of these same pots in a back garden. You can’t see it, but there is a small hosta in the center. That stayed, but the begonias and coleus got pulled out from all 5 pots. It is hard to do, but I can’t do everything after a hard frost, so I work around little by little, cleaning and trimming, and putting the gardens to bed. This is a different kind of gardening year for sure. Normally all the gardens would pretty much readied for the winter by now. Only ongoing raking of leaves would continue.

Still pretty green last week, but all the pots were emptied anyway except for a few.

I’ll leave you with this and the below photo of my two pupsters. Carter on the left, Whitley on the right. This is what happens every evening. We eat our dinner, and then while we clear the table, they sit or down next to the island and wait for their treat of 3 pieces of leftovers. Almost every time Whitty puts a paw over Carter, as though to say, “stay down you fool, or we may not get the treats”. She is very good about staying in the down while we clear the table, but Carter? Maybe 90% of the time. He prefers to sit. They are always next to each other, with Carter usually putting his head on her back. She is the boss, but always in a sweet and gentle way. Never a snarl from either one.

Another evening, another paw crossing.