Frost on the rooftops

Looking back on previous October blog posts, I see why it seems like autumn events feel delayed - it is because they ARE! The leaves on trees don't seem to be turning but just drying up and dropping. Even my oak tree that usually clings tenaciously to its leaves until spring has dropped most its leaves. WTH?

Sometimes I get so busy with yard and garden maintenance that I forget to actually *look* at what is growing. Today I strolled around the yard, observing mostly how the weeds are winning again (still?) The new 'Fluffly' western arborvitae is looking good, though, better than its predecessor.

We've had a couple of frosty nights - not enough to damage the tomato plant but frost nonetheless - so maybe the plants will get the hint and act like the end is near.

The frost ain't on the pumpkin

The weather continues to confound. Here it is, almost halfway through October, and we are having 80+ degree days. The leaves on trees are just beginning to turn. One neighborhood I walk the dog through has iris blooming and a tree of some sort blossoming. Crazy.

It's been dry, so we took advantage of the weather and went for a walk in the woods. I like to look for mushrooms this time of year, not to pick but to admire. We spotted the usual culprits, but then near the end of our little hike we found these clusters of Jack o' Lantern mushrooms at the base of dead trees.

They are good for dyeing yarn, but I didn't pick any. For one thing, we were in a nature preserve where one takes only memories (and photographs). For another, these are highly poisonous and should be handled only with gloved hands.

I've been so busy lately that about the only thing I have done outside is mow. Hummingbirds still visit the pineapple sage, while bluebirds feast on the Virginia creeper berries. The seasons do change, just not as fast as they used to.

Soggy

We received more rain this week. Despite the rain garden, the backyard gets soggy, too soggy to comfortably mow. I'll give it a go tomorrow. Maybe. And/or mulch some more.

I've learned to not plant anything in the fall, as by now I'm losing interest in the yard and garden. So I'm happy to see the spring-planted annual pineapple sage start blooming in September. It's amazing how large it gets. The one on the left has a six-foot span, the one on the right is about four feet wide. (Dog for comparison.)

The goldenrod on the south side of the house is about done, while the shorter one on the north side is peaking. The insects *love* it. My SO dug up a clump of it for his yard and is having a similar experience.

The yellow jackets are loving my compost pile. Clio the dog sometimes sits out there, snapping at the flying insects. She has been stung before, but doesn't learn her lesson. I, on the other hand, know to add to the pile early in the day, before the activity starts. Yellow jackets get testy as their food sources die off in the fall.

(These posts get rather boring this time of year, but I don't want to get out of the habit of writing. So please bear with me as we enter the dormant season. Thanks!)

Visitors

I'm taking advantage of this gorgeous weekend to get some outdoor work done, now that the rain has paused, and observed these visitors:

Orange sulphur butterfly
(Colias eurytheme)

Praying mantis

Sometimes you just need to keep your eyes open.

Inside, one of my houseplants is blooming.

Parlor palm
(Chamaedorea elegans)

Again, it helps to pay attention.

Otherwise, it has been another week of mulching and mowing. Today I even trimmed the yard. All the Halloween flamingos are out, including the new skeleton ones.

I see that one of my elderly neighbors (and by "elderly", I mean older than me) now has a scooter to help him get around the yard. There are days when I am about ready to give up on the house but I don't want to abandon the yard - it's not done yet! (Will it ever be done?) I guess once I can no longer take care of the yard myself, I will consider moving. But not yet. Not yet.

Be careful what you wish for

At the end of my last post I mentioned that we needed rain. And rain we got - 4" in the past couple of days. Today was dry, so I mowed and unplugged some downspouts, just in time for more rain over the next three days.

The rain garden is FULL and parts of the backyard soggy. I haven't been able to do much of anything out there, so not much to report.

My next door neighbor goes all out with her seasonal outdoor decor. My efforts are mostly limited to changing flamingos. I do usually purchase a "hardy" mum for the front porch, though. And one could consider the spider webs on said porch to be Halloween decor?

I am pleased about how the coleus looks this year. Sometimes it gets leggy or bedraggled, but this year it looks *great*.

And that is about it for this week.

Up close and personal

While spraying the weeds, I came across this guy, not in the milkweed "forest" but on one solo volunteer outside the "meadow". I worried that he might be too late for the trip to Mexico, but late monarch caterpillars are part of the "super generation" that not only migrates thousands of miles but lives for months instead of weeks. Alas, it was gone the next day, presumably eaten by a bird. :-(

Then while weeding the meadow, I noticed clusters of red milkweed beetles. When I got too close, they began to scatter. Not sure why, as they taste terrible (according to AI) so are not prey. You'd think they would be more confrontational over being disturbed.

The container plants on the deck are now getting more sun, provoking them to bloom more. I repotted the fuchsia with plans to try to winter them over indoors. The question is whether to do so in the garage where they will be dormant or try to keep them inside the house and maintain them like active houseplants.

This geranium has been overwintered inside the house but looked ragged... until I repotted it. Right now the whole plant looks great. If I overwinter outdoor plants in the house, I should provide them with more light.

The pineapple sage is starting to bloom. It provides late summer nectar for the hummingbirds. In fact, I see a hummer feeding on the blossoms RIGHT NOW.

I've been remiss about some of the weeds and they are going to seed (BAD, BAD GARDENER!) One type of so-called weed sending fluffy seeds hither and yon turned out to not be a weed after all but wild aster. It's very prolific and the goldfinch like the seeds, so I guess I'll stop pulling it.

Most of my labor these days is weeding and mulching. I'm still picking tomatoes and strawberries, but I gave up on the green beans. The grass continues to grow, so there is mowing and trimming as well. The temps are in the 70's, sometimes 80's, so it is still summerlike but not so oppressive. We could use more rain, though.

Like a mullet

Friday night we received 1.75" of welcome rain, which means it is a good time to pull weeds. While bending over a garden bed, I think about my older brothers who love to travel. I'd rather be weeding my garden than waiting for a connection in an airport.

Today I worked on the beds out front, which often leaves me disgruntled because they just don't look very attractive despite all the money I spent having the yard redesigned. Over the course of next summer I plan to move almost all the natives in the front to the back. Then the summer after, I'll replant the front with more standard shrubs, etc. The description that comes to mind is "Business in the front, party in the back."

I have no memory of planting goldenrod on the south side of the house, but there it is, big and beautiful. Now there appears to be a new variety, one that is fuzzy looking and shorter. Hairy goldenrod? I *know* I did not plant it, but goldenrod is rather opportunistic when it comes to bare ground. With the variety I *did* plant on the north side of the house, I now seem to have three kinds of goldenrod. The more, the merrier, at least as far as the pollinators go.

Speaking of pollinators, my SO planted Mexican sunflowers this summer. They have proven to be quite the butterfly and bee magnet. I meant to plant some myself but didn't get around to it. Next year for sure!

We stopped at Lowe's the other day for more mulch and spotted this plant: Echibeckia?!? I consulted AI about this new hybrid. It produces pretty blooms over a long period of time and is sterile, so will not reseed itself. It can be grown as a perennial in USDA zones 6-9 (I'm 5B, so I would be paying $16.98 for a single annual) and attracts beneficial insects.

Don't plant this!

Wait - WHAT?!? I challenged AI about this plant's ability to attract pollinators. And it admitted I was right. Here are the drawbacks of coneflower/rudbeckia cultivars (direct quotes from AI):

• Sterility: Echibeckia is a sterile hybrid. Because it does not set seed, it provides zero food for birds like finches, who heavily rely on the late-season seed heads of native Echinacea and Rudbeckia. 
•  Altered Flower Anatomy: Many popular cultivars (like the Summerina Glow series) feature double-petaled or highly modified densely packed structures. This makes it physically difficult for bees and butterflies to access what little pollen or nectar might be available. 
• Lack of Co-Evolution: True native pollinators evolved alongside straight species (like Echinacea purpurea or Rudbeckia fulgida). Man-made hybrids prioritize aesthetics—like massive blooms, unusual colors, and extended shelf-life—often at the direct expense of nutrient quality

So don't buy this plant!

Inside, I noticed that my aloe vera plant has produced babies, also known as "pups" or "offsets". Four of them... so far. I'm a little surprised since the mother plant is not that big. I'll leave them for now, but I really don't want *more* houseplants.

Outside (thankfully) is this BIG spider that I assume is a funnel spider. I noticed it when it came out to kill a fly caught in its web. I like spiders... as long that they are not in the house!

Maybe it is time to hunt up some Osage orange balls.

Signs of autumn

In a few days, the high temperatures will hit 90+ again, but in the meantime I am going to pretend that autumn is on its way. The yard looks like it agrees, as summer blooms become less vibrant and the fall ones start to come into their own.

Wasps seem to outnumber the bees, at least on the goldenrod. I plan to use the flowers from this plant to dye yarn, so I'll need to harvest early in the day and shake off any bugs that are hiding out. Don't worry - there will be plenty left for the insects.

The fruit on the flowering crabs and winterberry is turning.

And in anticipation of Halloween, new flamingos have been added to the collection.

Under the "out and about" category, my SO and son and I visited the local botanical conservatory this week. I don't usually go there in the summer - and now I know why: it's HOT in there on a sunny day! The tropical and desert displays feel like more of a respite during the winter months, but I wanted to see their pueblo garden display. Of particular interest were methods for conserving water: buried ollas and waffle beds. The "three sisters" - corn, beans, and squash - were planted together, another age-old gardening trick. And then there were those ever-popular southwest colors - terra cotta adobe and blue doors.

It's difficult to leave a garden of any kind without purchasing a memento, in this case three living stone plants. I wanted something that would not outgrow the pot for many years, and these "buttons" look like they fit the bill. Hopefully, I won't kill them. (The foliage and flowers in the photos are artificial.)

This year there seems to be a plethora of articles on deadheading and seed-saving coneflowers. The advice does not compute, as indicated by the comments that accompany the posts, most of which lean toward the "leave the seeds for the birds" and "coneflowers will reseed themselves" variety. Yes, the fading flowers are not very pretty but the goldfinch feeding on them are.

Bag by bag, bit by bit

I decided the beds in the backyard needed mulch. In the past, I have shoveled big piles of it, but that takes forever. Now my MO is to purchase six bags at a time. I'm keeping count, as next year I may have Lowe's deliver a pallet of bags at the beginning of the season. That would be easier on my SO, who does the heavy lifting at the store.

Regarding the arches, I decided instead of cutting them in half, I could just remove some of the middle bits so that they can straddle the fence. Executing that idea is a bit of a challenge tool-wise and muscle-wise. I may solicit some assistance from my SO since I am using his tools and he has more upper body strength.

Besides mulching and mowing, I haven't done a lot in the yard this past week. Something was accomplished inside, though: a new tankless reverse osmosis device. The contractors not only installed it and replaced the garbage disposal but also re-routed the plumbing under the kitchen sink so that I still have plenty of room for the usual junk that goes there.

It's that time of the year when the coneflower starts to fade and the goldenrod begins to come on. The pineapple sage plants are HUGE but they don't bloom until the last minute, a gift to the hummingbirds. Blue jays are back from wherever they summer. I have to keep reminding myself that it is still August because it feels like change is in the air.

Plans start to come together

I'm one of those people who is good at dreaming up ideas, not so good at actually implementing them. So when any of my crazy plans actually start to come together, I get very excited.

Something I have wanted for a while are arches over the gates. Fancy ones are very expensive (and then the welds break). I finally caught onto what other gardeners know to use: cattle panels. They are 16' x 50" and flexible and strong. My daughter transported them from Tractor Supply to my house. Today I wrestled them into position, sort of. I *think* I want to cut them in half lengthwise. Maybe.

Another idea involves defining paths through the larger beds in the backyard. There is a prototype of one between the rain garden and the chokeberry shrubs. Yesterday my daughter and I cleared some of the yard waste from the back of the yard and took it to the biosolids site. Today I took some mulch and defined where I think the path could be in the that bed.

Around the oak tree...

...through the shrubs...

...pass the arborvitae.

Looking back

This summer was the summer of TOO - working in the yard was difficult because it was TOO cool in the spring, TOO hot in the summer, TOO dry, TOO wet, TOO sunny, TOO humid, TOO, TOO, TOO. Occasionally we'd have a perfect day for yardening, but then I frequently had something else I needed to do. I'm relatively satisfied with how I kept up, though there is always more to do.

I sent my lawncare company a note, asking if they use insecticide in their treatment. They didn't answer. Is that a yes? I may try another service next year.

Dog daze

School is starting, which makes it feel like summer is over, but the temperatures say otherwise. I'm sitting under the elm tree in the backyard, watching goldfinch in the coneflower, hummingbird at the pestemon, swallowtail on the Joe pye. It's rather quiet for a Sunday afternoon - no mowers or loud cars or blaring music. Almost like living in the middle of nowhere.

Why I grow everbearing strawberries

This week's tasks revolved around pruning and weeding and mulching. I'm starting to get a little tired of watering and mowing. At the same time, I am anxiously awaiting next summer, as I have plans, always more plans, for what to do with the yard. It's good to have something to look forward to.

By the way, my ear infection turned out to be a fungal thing. That explains why nothing seemed to be helping until the local ENT office provided me with the proper diagnosis and an rx for ear drops. Still not completely better, but progress. Could be worse.

Chatty AI

Recently, when I searched for a perennial that would do well with no morning sun or afternoon sun but about four hours of midday sun, yarrow was recommended. Then the search engine on my phone asked questions about my search results, which is something new to me. "We" chatted a bit over that before I bailed. (You don't have to politely end a "conversation" with AI - just rudely leave. So satisfying.)

My SO commented that his yarrow looks great but hasn't bloomed in years. So the next day I queried about that. The response was yarrow needs 6-8 hours of sun a day. I countered "But yesterday you said...." That elicited an apology and a clarification. Funny stuff.

Rudbeckia with a bit of ironweed

One thing AI seems inadequate for is identifying odd bugs. I haven't had any luck ID'ing these two. They both are very tiny.

However, common whitetail skimmers popped up after a text search, which is good because I can't get close enough for a photo. They seem to like the nodding onion.

Two adult mourning doves with their youngsters

My SO and I visited Fort Wayne Rocks, as I have a plan to create gravel paths through the larger beds so I can get into them, but I want to edge the paths with rocks to contain the gravel. I didn't order the rocks yet - need to clear out some yard waste first - but the price for a pallet of what I want is reasonable.

I mentioned my plan to my daughter and she flashed me some photos of what she would like to do with rocks. We both have flat yards, so nothing dramatic can be accomplished, but my idea is plain vanilla compared to hers.

Strong enough

I have been so busy lately that I castigate myself for not exercising beyond walking the dog. But surely yardening counts, right? I'm strong enough to be able to do what I want.

Withstanding the heat is another matter. The past week has been rather delightful temperatur-wise, so I tackled the beds in the front of the house, cutting back spent flower stems and weeding; it looks better now. Today I transplanted some of the volunteer nodding onion to the backyard, then mulched a bit in the shade, as that sun was HOT. More hot weather is on the way. Hopefully it will bring some much needed rain.

The oak tree in the backyard was installed with a stake to hold it up while it established its roots. Last week I checked the collar that circles the trunk and discovered it was time to remove that thing. Ditto the flowering crab in the front yard. One of those things that is easy to forget.

Despite being new, one of the culver root plants is blooming. If I didn't water all the newbies every day or two, I would have missed it.

I have seen more butterflies - swallowtails and monarchs - in the backyard this summer than I have the past several years combined. They don't stay, but it is still a good sign that they are at least checking things out. Nothing discourages the cicadas - the song of summer.

Another indoor week

As if the hot weather is not enough to send one scurrying indoors, this week we have had to contend with poor air quality, thanks to some wildfires. Today offered a break from the bad air and it was supposed to be "only" 85 degrees out, so I slaved away a bit in the "meadow", clearing out some weeds and mulching the coneflowers. The temp actually reached 90(!), and I could not help but think, "Only mad dogs and Englishmen go out in the noonday sun...."

Joe pye

Even with a large yard to draw me outside, I sometimes don't take time to look around. This week I've witnessed Mama Hawk teaching her two youngsters to hunt, hummingbirds visiting the fuschia, a monarch amidst the milkweed, possible fox or coyote scat in the front lawn. I just have to pay attention.

'Golden Tiara' hosta

I have ordered a couple of landscape designs in my lifetime. Recently it occurred to me that the designs show the plantings from a birdseye view, and not how the plantings will look to a person standing nearby. For example, the shrubs and trees in the backyard provide a variety of greens and visual textures, but they need something more, some other colors. Ditto the natives planted in the front of the house - pretty when they bloom in the spring, otherwise a lot of green that also looks kind of weedy.

Begonia

After the last go-round with the landscape, I told my SO that if this does not work out, I'm putting everything back into lawn. But I'm not doing that, obviously. I keep making changes instead, mostly additions.

Sunbathing

Because what would I do with myself if I didn't have the yard?

Love the one you're with

I have IBS and sometimes get really bummed about all the foods I can no longer enjoy. Most of the time, however, I focus on what I *can* eat and have discovered some new and yummy meals (air fryer tofu, anyone?) Ditto the bugs in my yard. Several times a day I check on the bees on the bee balm and every evening I make a point of watching the fireflies. If one takes a moment to look around, there are more insects to enjoy.

Like this ladybug on some milkweed.

Or this white-striped black mason wasp. (Photo from Wiki - I didn't want to get too close until I found out whether this guy was friend or foe.)

This volunteer butterflyweed attracted a black swallowtail. (For some reason, the red, white, and blue flamingos keep their heads buried in the aster.)

So there *are* some 6-leggeds in my yard, just not as many as I wish for.

This is one view from my deck. In the foreground, joe pye and queen of the prairie, in the rain garden swamp milkweed, in the back coneflower, milkweed, cupplant, sunflower. This is the kind of color I would like to see all over my backyard this time of year.

Volunteer sunflower

Cupplant

I continue to attack the weeds. Most of the backyard is under control except for the corner pictured above. Yesterday I worked on one of the beds in the front yard, for about two hours; there was a LOT of clover. Always more to do.