We had a couple of frosty night last week - both nights the temp got down to the high 20's. One of those nights, Berlin, NH was featured as the cold spot of the day with a temp somewhere in the teens (I've forgotten the exact temp).
I have to get into the garden and see if any tomatoes or peppers survived the cold. The Wonderful Spouse was kind enough to pick all the tomatoes that showed even a blush of color the evening before the first frost so it's not catastrophic if nothing survived. I put the tomatoes on a counter to ripen up and have enough to can a bit more salsa, or perhaps some regular old tomato sauce. I'm off work tomorrow for the holiday, so I'm hoping to do some canning then.
Despite the frost, my petunias seem to very happy; they are just blooming away! Yesterday I picked some seed pods from them and other plants to dry and save for next year. Something else to store in the fridge until the next growing season. I have bags, envelopes, jars and film containers of seeds in the fridge. One of these days I'm going to have to get a small "6-pack" fridge so that I can put them in there and save the upstairs fridge space for actual food and condiments.
The onions and potatos will soon be ready to be pulled (thanks Cop Car for identifying that mistery plant for me!). Then it will be time to remove all the straw and landscape fabric that I have been using as weed control - sure am looking forward to that NOT. It seems silly that I will be removing straw from the garden and composting it, but I will be buying straw to put in the doghouse! I will use some of the straw from the garden as a mulch for overwintering a few plants though.
I also have to clean up the flower gardens - pull the dead leaves and flower stalks off irises, lilies and such. Fortunately, the new flower bed at the end of the driveway is still looking nice and green, so I won't have to do anything there for a while. Meanwhile, some of the late-blooming bulbs in the upper bed have been putting on a show so while I'm out doing yard work, I have plenty of things to appreciate.
The leaves are really changing around here; too bad they didn't look this nice while the folks were here. The highbush cranberries, that I planted earlier this year, are a nice crimson red to compliment the maples' deeper red, the birches' yellow and the oaks' orange. And of course the changing of the leaves means that raking said leaves is not far behind. But for now, we are enjoying the vibrant colors.
Today is "stack the rest of the wood" day. I got about half of it stack a month ago but haven't gotten back to it since. It should be a nice day to do this type of work, a bit cool but dry.
I'm off to peruse other blogs before delving in to the outside work. Hope everyone is having a great weekend!
What a beautiful picture you paint of your yard and surroundings. You are probably a week or so ahead of us in terms of color; here in NE Pennsylvania, our peak will be the weekend of the 15th.
Posted by: Jackie | October 10, 2004 at 06:42 PM
Next year you have to post more pictures of your gardens. Cop Car tells me that you've done a LOT of work on them!
Posted by: Buffy | October 10, 2004 at 10:04 PM
Jackie - Had lots of wind yesterday so lost a lot of leaves. Wish our peak lasted longer!
Buffy - I'm still working on posting pics from Niagara and you're already bugging me about pics of the yard from next year! LOL
Posted by: bogie | October 13, 2004 at 04:13 AM