Late to the dance

Even though everybody else tried their hand at sourdough started months ago, I finally decided to give it a go. After running through a 5-pound bag of flour with no significant results, I abandoned the project. Feeding it twice a day was like having another pet. Also, I was a bit ambivalent about using it on a regular basis. I need another hobby like a hole in the head.

The grass is still green, but just about everything else has turned brown or brownish. The one exception in my yard is the coralberry bush. It is holding its yellow fall foliage for quite a while. The red fruit adds to its vibrance.

Something odd I have noticed lately around town is some ornamental grasses are sending up new growth. Even my pampas grass is doing this. I blame the weather - unusually warm, a few frosty days, more warmth, etc. I just hope the plants are not weakened by yo-yo temperatures.

I think the sparrows are showing a preference for cracked corn over peanuts and sunflower seeds. However, the feeder I bought for this purpose tends to get plugged up. It's not just the feeder design, but the clumping characteristic of the corn. I recall having this problem before, which is one reason I stopped feeding cracked corn. (From where I am sitting, I can see a junco under the arborvitae and a downy woodpecker on the suet. Yesterday a hawk landed in the redbud right outside the window, but flew off before I could grab a camera.)

I'm experimenting with wintering over hardy chrysanthemum in the garage. One source says that this is doable; also, mums planted in the spring have a better chance of surviving winter outside, as their root system gets more firmly established over the summer. However, I doubt they will live very long; in the past, I've had mums live for a few years, then one by one, peter out. I still like the idea of growing yellow strawflowers instead; an annual, they need to be planted each year and periodically deadheaded.

I hope you all had a safe Thanksgiving. It was just me and my SO here. My kids stayed home, by brothers stayed home, my neighbors went camping to avoid maskless relatives. Indiana is not faring well regarding number of new cases per capita, schools in this area have been going totally remote because there is not enough healthy staff, especially bus drivers, to keep going. We'll see what the rest of the holiday season brings. Stay safe!

Despite the weather

There has been a feeding frenzy at the bird feeders recently, mostly sparrows. I began to wonder if we are in for a rough winter, but the forecast is for mild and dry instead of cold and wet. We shall see.

We had a light frost the other night, nothing that would finish off the zinnias. I've been throwing a sheet over the coleus on the front porch when warned, but I dug up a new mother plant for next year's cuttings, just in case.

Now that the fence work is complete, I transplanted the bee balm to the south side of the house, after moving some of the remaining asters from the house side to the fence side of the same area. I'm a little confused about the aster varieties I have. What I moved looks like New England asters but are shorter. A volunteer aster has popped up in the yard as well, something I thought at first was more fleabane (which is done), then classified as a low growing aster, but then changed my mind again when I realized the plants were not low growing but floppy. Some day I may get all the asters sorted out, but not today.

I repeatedly try to capture the reddish hue of the Big Blue Stem in fall, but my pix never do it justice. This is the one that is most upright; next year I will try to prop up the others, as they look great in front of the fence.

A shrub I pretty much ignore is the coralberry. This year I made a point of checking on it periodically, because I wanted to actually see the berries. My efforts have been rewarded. I thought this shrub would get a LOT bigger, like eight feet across. This is its third season, so maybe I am being impatient.

The spicebush witch hazel is another shrub I tend to ignore, even though it looks lovely in front of the viburnum. I've yet to notice any berries on it, or blossoms either. This is its third year as well, and like the coralberry, it seems puny compared to what it should become.

Virginia creeper is one of my fall favorites, although sometimes it grows where I don't want it to, like behind the vinyl siding on my house. I'm still thinking of trying it in a container on the pergola, though. Tell me if I am nuts.

Rhubarb always surprises me with its fall color. Although I don't grow food anymore (something I have been debating lately as I never made it to a farmers market this summer and the grocery store zucchini tastes horrible), I keep my rhubarb patch for pie and dye.

I should be finishing up a few things in the front yard, but instead have been fixing up the raised beds I plan to keep, moving dirt from the defunct beds and mulching with newspaper and shredded cypress. The bee/wasp nest is still active, but once they settle down, I'll complete the transplanting of coneflower.

While searching through my blog for references to this or that, I've come to realize that there are a LOT of plants that I loved but that disappeared and were consequently forgotten. I'm making a list of ones I'd like to re-introduce to the yard, plus some new ones. This, despite my vow to downsize the garden.