Heather's Garden

PICTURE THIS PHOTO CONTEST

I've been so bad about keeping up with reading my favorite gardening blogs.  It seems like I check Gardening Gone Wild just after their Picture This contest closes each month or just before the new subject is posted.  I just happened to look today and found out I have a few hours before the deadline for this month's subject: The End of the Line.  Unfortunately I'm not really in the mood to pour through all my photos -- this FL sun has really sapped my energy. 

But I mustered enough energy to glance back into my archives and I quickly came across this one from December 2007:

It was a little tea rose that a friend picked up at the grocery store and gave us when she came over for dinner.  I think roses are beautiful, but I'm not interested in the amount of work they require.  Still it was pretty resilient and bloomed very late into that gardening season.  And it was an interesting photo subject during that season's first snow.  I doubt this photo will be honored, but I'm too tired to find something better!

THIS SAYS IT ALL

This article in the NY Times says it all.  Thank God this horrible gardening season is over.  I just keep imagining if this had been my first season gardening instead of my 3rd, but really I'm just glad I don't rely on my garden for more than the relaxation tending it brings me and the added benefit of whatever produce it yields.  I can't imagine what it must have been like to watch the rain fall and the crops fail if your livelihood depended on it.  Until yesterday we've actually been experiencing beautiful warm fall weather giving VPH some lovely days to get outside and get the leaves picked up: 

That photo was from day one of the clean up...he did get all of the leaves that were on the ground shredded and into the compost pile, but you'll see that quite a few of the trees around the house still haven't dropped their leaves:

And there are weird things happening all over the garden.  The petunias are hanging on:

 

Which is a good thing since I never got around to potting up the mums:

And I include this last photo so you can get an idea of how large the spider by the front door really is.  The post it's on is 4-5 inches wide:

 

Slightly freaky!  It's been raining solidly for 2 days now and we're supposed to head out to FL on Tuesday, so I'm not sure when we're going to get outside to get the dahlias into the basement for the winter.  We could take the chance that they'll hang on just fine until early December when we're planning to return home, but I think the ground will probably freeze by then.  Would it be worse to put them in the basement wet or let them potentially freeze?