Our sliding property

A lot of mud has been washing off our garden and onto the sidewalks, and when I saw this tree root exposed at the top of the right-side garden for the first time, I had to admit that it appears that our whole yard is sliding downhill. I suppose without the trees to hold it in place, it is just eroding. Not sure what to do about that, apart from planting more stuff (twist my arm).

The deer are lately making a path directly across our front lawn, in the dark of night.

Raccoon print

Discovered by Emma in our back yard, a raccoon print:

Endless leaves to rake

The yard is barren, waiting for spring.

As usual, it took me longer to get around to some serious raking than I intended, and I only got half of it done yesterday.

This stupid tree is hanging on to those leaves for dear life.

Oak-y dokey

It's been downright soggy here and the whole darned yard is basically now a mushroom farm. There are a lot of different small varieties and also these three different huge fungi all on the same tree.

We had carpenter ants on the same huge tripartite oak in early September, and Ryan from SavATree reassured me that it's not necessarily a sign of decay. However, he said to keep an eye on this cleft between two of the trunks. If it gets bigger, we need to worry. (Meanwhile, being me, I guess I'll just worry that it will get bigger.)

Barely scratching the surface

"I'll get started on the bulbs today!" was what I told myself, and then I decided to place a stepping stone, and by the time I'd planted a measly two bulbs (the one-turned-into-two allium from the back plot, transplanted) it was lunchtime and darned if there aren't still FORTY-SIX MORE BULBS to plant on top of all the other carp on my to-do list.

Anyway this is where the first two are. They're just uphill of the delphinium and south of the new stepping stone.

And I saw a new kind of butterfly, American Lady, on our sad-looking end-of-season zinnias:

Our house in the middle of our street

Divine fragrance and displaced digitalis

I don't know what this shrub is, by the YMCA, but it bloomed for about a week and smelled AMAZING.

Sep. 12

In anticipation of the back yard being redone (still no timeline), I transplanted my foxgloves to the front.