Fall tasks

I continue to grind away at the fall tasks. Raking and mowing even just a fraction of my yard made me very weary today. It would be more pleasant if it were a little warmer (high around 50 today) and I wasn't subjected to the incessant droning of leafblowers on properties in a who-knows-how-many-blocks radius. Seriously, it's all day long, and it gets to me. Fall is the worst, but it starts around March and doesn't stop till December or so. There was a vicious debate about leafblowers on the neighborhood website a couple weeks ago. People are crazy and cruel on both sides.

I noticed this morning that the anenome in front had white fluff on its stems, and on looking closer, I found the fluff to be covered in tiny delightful seeds. It would be lovely if this plant self-sows!

In addition to some rakin' and mowin' today, I pulled out some dead annuals (we had our first frost last week), and scattered some grass seed in a bald patch by the front door (same spot I planted grass a couple years ago - why did it die this summer?). And I pulled up one of my honey locust transplants in the pots - they looked dead, and sure enough it had not formed roots. Whatevs. Guess it would need some rooting medium were I to try this again. I did read that locusts are very aggressive spreaders, so it probably wouldn't need too much chemical encouragement.

White Flower Farm responded very promptly to my email about the moldy bulb (see last post), and noted that they were sold out of allium so could not offer a replacement, so they refunded me for the allium packet of 3, which I thought was very accommodating of them.

I took all my seeds from the past two years that I never planted - about 7 or so packs - and scattered those in the dirt between the artemesia and the phlox in the front. Don't have much optimism they'll come up in spring, but what do I have to lose? The packets included hot peppers, lavender, basil, portulaca, and parsley, that I remember. I was inspired by this missive from Pinetree Garden Seeds:

Fall is a great time to get a head start on annual and perennial flowers for the next gardening season. Direct sowing flower seeds in the fall can be beneficial to the busy spring gardener; we tend to have more time, weeds are not as much of a nuisance, no need to start them indoors under lights, and the flowers bloom earlier on more robust plants. Here are a few flowers that are best for fall sowing and these ones will often continue self-sowing each season.Sow the seeds when the ground is near frozen, after a killing frost, but before it snows.This keeps them from germinating so they can lay dormant until spring.
Choose a site and prepare soil 1-3 weeks before sowing seeds. Weed, cultivate shallowly and add compost.

​Mixing the seeds with sand can help with a more even distribution or simply sprinkle the seeds from the package over the ground. Water in the seeds or wait until rain is the forecast. Do not forgot to mark your spots so in the spring you can thin them out if needed and keep the weeds down.

Fall plantings completed, and my promiscuous locust tree

On Friday I stuck the last of the bulbs into the ground. A few weeks earlier I had planted my new hydrangea and peony, too, and while the squirrels targeted the site of the former, I am hopeful the root remains in the ground, ready for spring.

We haven't had a frost yet and the darned grass keeps growing, so I keep raking and mowing.

Unfortunately one of my allium bulbs was moldy. I should have looked at it as soon as it arrived a few weeks prior, but did not. I have asked White Farms whether a replacement is nonetheless possible. Anyway I planted the sad on lowest on the hill, for my future reference.

This shows where the allium bulbs went - in between these three salvia plants

To either side of the geraniums on one side of the sidewalk is where 12 of the daffodils went

And between and above the geraniums on the other side of the sidewalk went another 12

I was delighted to see that all 3 poppies (foreground) got leaves again after dying back in the hot summer! Can't wait to see how well they return next year.

Front yard

There is an interesting story about this tree, which I think is a honey locust breed without thorns. In my garden, close to the driveway, it appeared to have spawned a child. So I went to dig it up, and when I did so, I saw that there were several separate stems, so I assumed several seeds had sprouted.

Wrong! What I found was a big old root, presumably all the way from the mother tree, and four mini-trees had sprouted from it.

So I stuck the root in a vice and sawed all the sprouts apart, then stuck three of them in dirt in pots, and the fourth (below) in water. I thought, they may well die, but let's see if they grow roots.

A few days later, the one in water is on the verge of death. So I cut off the main root and will see whether the sprout alone forms roots. And probably the ones in the pots will die. Eh, whatevs.

Unrelatedly, my little baby peony in the back has done just fine so far.