LysmachiaMoon's blog: Catching up

It's been a Hurry Up and Wait kind of week. I'm swamped with office jobs, so I'm only getting out to do hit or miss gardening. We got a tremendous rainfall ...over two inches in 24 hours...so that took another day off the gardening calendar. But no complaints, we're 8 inches below normal for the year and can use every drop. Amazingly, after all that rain, not even a glimmer of moisture in Marsh Run. The Run is "ephemeral," it can run like a full-fledged stream during wet years, but it disappears entirely when it gets dry. The marshland around it is very green so it is not dried out but there is no running or standing water.

Thanksgiving dinner was great! We had sweet potatoes and rhubarb (instead of cranberry sauce) from the garden and that made me feel very good. Something to show for all that hard work!

I decided to put the Black Lace elderberry along the wooden fence in the South Long Border. It meant moving a clump of struggling iris forward in the bed where they will get more sun (they only bloomed very sparsely this year) and also lifting out my "Niobe" clematis. Niobe has never bloomed, even though she has been there for several years. I'm moving her today to the veg garden fence where she will get a lot more sun.

Today, with luck, I'm going to try to put in a couple of dogwoods that I've been holding in pots for a couple of years. Those will go either into the Woodland Garden or up to the Asian Garden area. I've also got a burgundy barberry that I want to put into the upper South Border; it's color will help balance the almost identical color of the newly moved Japanese Maple. I've also got a handful of small, miscellaneous hostas that I think I'll just plant en masse in the expanded Pond Circle south side bed.

The concrete column I poured last week came out very nicely. If I can figure out a way to safely move it, I'd like to put it in place in the Sundial Garden to hold the sundial. I'm concerned that it's still so newly cured that bouncing it around in a wheelbarrow may crack it. I want to figure out some sort of sling or sled to move it without too much stress.

Gathering persimmons. My two wild trees are loaded with fruit this year, but it's a contest to get any of it because the deer love them too. It's always best to wait until the fruit fall to the ground so you can be sure they are ripe, but I've got to time it so I get some before the deer eat them. Late afternoon is best...So far I've collected a little more than a pint of the small fruit.

It's a time when I still want to get a lot of things done, but the weather is starting to work against me and the time of year. I think this week will be the absolute end for putting things in the ground, unless we continue to have unseasonably mild weather into December (which can happen). I'm pretty sure my attempts at concrete work will have to come full stop but, again, if we get a warm week maybe....
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This weekend I've GOT to get into the Storybook Garden and give it a good cleanup. I don't know why I've seemed to develop a mental block against working in there. It's a mess and I get in and do a little with the secateurs then something all too easily calls me away.

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