The thumbnail is Sue's gorgeous photo of September Song



This is a rose I would love to have. I ordered it once from Heirloom, but they sent me the usual shrub with pink blooms. All of my mislabeled roses from Heirloom and Rogue Valley Roses are unidentifiable pink shrubs. All of my mislabeled roses from Hortico are Iceberg and Autumn Damask. They must have a never-ending supply of those.

Summer's winding down and I'm longing for November, even though the rose flush here in September and October is almost as impressive as the April/May show. I'm ready to start the winter clean-up work.

Zu - if you're anxious about winter, you're welcome to our snow that we've already gotten up in our mountains.... today's our last gasp of summer as it's 90degs right now (almost 20degs warmer than normal), then it drops like a stone into the 70s & 40s here on out. We'll probably see snow next month. Yay.

Those of us who really don't like winter live where there isn't any.

Thanks, Toni, but no thanks! It's rain that I want. Even if we have another drought year, we'll have some rain in November. I'm sick and tired of watering the garden every single day.

I'm also anxious to start re-doing the beds: getting rid of the useless plants, replanting the small ones in containers, and planting new things in the space made available by the first two maneuvers. It's a lot easier to dig after some rain has fallen, and rain helps the transplants get established.

Winter will also make the garden safer in another way. I've had to stop weeding because I see yellowjackets rising up out of the ground in a lot of places while I'm watering. I don't want to take the chance of disturbing a nest of them in the ground, so I've been staying out of the beds.

My husband finally came home after working out of state for the last 5 months, so NOW I am getting some help watering! Yay! After dragging hoses a few days, my irrigation project has been moved to top priority on our home improvement list.
Go figure.
He came up with a way to wrap a hose around the golf cart seat so a 400 foot length of hose can be driven from spigot to flower bed. I have a torn muscle in my shoulder and I'm pretty sure it's from dragging heavy hoses every day.
I had several beds I had just given up on that maybe just possibly will be saved! I'm glad my husband was here to help me clean out some shrub beds because I got into a big hornets nest. Only one stung me, luckily. I still have the knot from that, a week later. Super glad he took out that nest and 3 others and I didn't have to use the epi-pen.
The Palatine site opens the same day as the iris sale begins on cubits, and that's a day or two before my huge order from Maryott hits the front porch. oh boy.....and the native plant sale is this weekend along with our club daylily sale. I need to sell a whole bunch of plants to make room and to pay for the new ones!
Today was our last really hot day, according to the forecast. That string of 100 degree days zapped my energy. I'm looking forward to working in cool air, and to tell the truth, I am looking forward to (hopefully!) seeing snow this winter! I love snow!

Cindi ....

That's good news. I am tired of trying to keep things watered on five levels. There's a lot of hose hauling involved with that, too, so you have my sympathies.

I am having a gopher and deer invasion. The gophers tunneled under the foundation on one side of my house and have made tunnels all around other parts of the foundation to come out into the garden. I've improved the soil so much, it's easy for them to get to the gardening beds. It's war.

The deer are starving and my garden is the only green spot on the whole hill. So far, the deer fencing is holding, but forget about planting deer resistant plants.

New things will be planted in gopher cages, but I don't know if I have it in me at this age to dig up everything and get them caged. Plus, I have to do all of the fall chores.

From what I have read, we are not going to get much rain again this winter, so I'll be out there watering when I think it is way too cold to be out there watering. Oh, joy.

Smiles,
Lyn

Cages plus these are my current weapon of choice. I have caught quite a few of them with these traps so far, not even squeamish anymore.


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002J89XYA/

I'll check into it. I found 15 tunnels coming out from under the house yesterday.

I think there are a lot more tunnels out in the yard.

Lyn

I forgot to add, I wish the dang gophers went after the weeds as aggressively as they do the roses ...

Lyn

I know, really!
All my roses are caged. I also caged my daylilies but they increase and need dividing and are now a pain to do that so I will no longer be caging them. Gophers love iris too but those also increase so can't be caged.

They can have my irises. The strange thing is that the gophers haven't touched the irises. I sited the irises wrong when I moved them from the top of the slope. I thought they were dwarf bearded irises and planted them near the front of the beds. HA ! They turned out to be tall bearded irises once I moved them to a spot they liked. I had planned to dig them out this year, but too many other things needed to be addressed and I never got to that project.

Now I am looking to add plants that don't need to be divided, but am spending my time fighting gophers.

It's always something.

Smiles,
Lyn

They didn't touch my irises for years. There was a time when I was throwing away hundreds and hundreds of rhizomes every year. After all of the bulbs and roses were encased in gopher-proof cages, however, the indiscriminate nature of the gophers became obvious. Now I barely have any irises left, and the gophers are coming after my camellias, lavateras, silenes, geums, lobelia, etc. The only nice things they don't like are daffodils.

Unfortunately, they also don't like blackberry vines, ivy, arum, grassy weeds, and everything else I don't like. How I wish they would develop a taste for some of the things I have to fight against every year! It would be so nice if they could eliminate all of the oak, privet, and buckeye seedlings that come over here from my neighbors' gardens.

Oh, yeah.

I've been told the reason I was invaded was that they are following the water. Ok... who cares "why"?

They've taken out my two liquid amber trees .. not the drought ... a peony and I am still discovering more tunnels every day. There are some roses they haven't touched like 'Purple Buttons', but they went after other roses in the same bed.

The lousy part is that my body has reached the "creaking" stage and it's the wrong time of year to cut back the top growth of modern roses and dig them up and put them in cages. They are working faster than I am at this stage.

ok, I quit. Already. not READY!!!

A few shots from a couple of days ago.


Grace





Irish Hope, about 7-8 foot tall


Pure Poetry





Sweet Dream





Graham Thomas, this cluster is about 7 feet high up against the satellite pergola


Hot Cocoa

Calif_Sue said:Cages plus these are my current weapon of choice. I have caught quite a few of them with these traps so far, not even squeamish anymore.


https://www.amazon.com/dp/B002J89XYA/

@Sue, aren’t those Cinch traps great! I discovered this year that they need some WD40, I kept setting them and the gophers would walk all over them and never trip them. I was so flabbergasted because they had been working wonderfully. Then I realized they were just ever so slightly rusty which wouldn’t allow them to trip.... lesson learned after loosing 2 pepper plants, numerous bush beans, a honey berry bush, my favorite rose, 75 % of my potato crop, and a blue berry bush!

That's good to know! I'll clean and spray mine this week. I did loose a gopher a couple of weeks ago. The trap was tripped but I think it was a smaller gopher because as I was pulling the trap out, I could see a small body and little feet squirming away. Reset the trap and never did catch it. I found a fresh tunnel today so set a trap in it. A gopher has been chewing on my huge lovely cordyline, http://garden.org/apps/sets/vi...
I already lost half of it. My son was walking past it last week and could hear the chewing on the stem. I potted up a section that still had roots, I hope I can save the rest.

I could only afford one trap. The rest of my gardening budget has to go to the hardware cloth.

I've only gotten two gophers with the traps. I went all around the foundation of the house and put bait in all of the tunnels I found. I've been putting my lavender prunings in many of the tunnels and that seems to be holding them off for a while in the beds where they were doing the most damage.

Unfortunately, gopher work can only be part time. I have to turn my attention to fall chores like stacking for cords of wood.

Since gophers don't go dormant, I'll be working on them as I can get to them this fall and winter.

I never thought I'd have them in the house pad level because of the glacier slurry, but over the years I've improved the soil, so, now they can get through. I sure hope they eat slow.

I have found that there are some plants they avoid, but all funds are going for the hardware cloth.

I guess I'll be working outside this winter.

Smiles,
Lyn

Wow that is awful, Lyn. Probably a lot of the animals are starving in the drought, so it's a bad situation all the way around. Wish I knew of a way to help you.
We've been putting t-posts next to our trees in an effort to keep deer damage down, but that's nothing compared to what you are dealing with. Hang in there.

Cindi ...

You probably saw my deer rant last month. They are starving up here.

My tiny patch of lawn, which gets watered because I am really watering the maple tree looks totally like it has a bad hair cut because that's where the deer are browsing.

I had three buckets of weeds down on the street level that I was going to toss over the cliff, but had forgotten about them. Believe it or not, the deer dumped them and ate all of the weeds.

The fire we had took out a lot of the brush that deer eat during the winter.

btw ... the deer resistant plants are not deer resistant this year, but the gophers seem to be leaving them alone. I guess they are also gopher resistant ...

Lyn