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Friday, October 1, 2010

Closing Down the Garden: Part One

October 1st!  October 1st!  I am so happy!  This is quickly tempered when I walk out my back door and see that what I have created over the past summer, must be undone for the winter.  Do I still not understand that all the planting and buying of flowers I do in May means I have to go back out in October and cut down, rip out, and pretty much denude my yard?  Of course, the Creeping Charlie is still thriving.  If I had a nuclear device that would harm nothing other than Creeping Charlie, you can bet I'd have a "Say Bye-Bye to Charlie" launch complete with nibblies and drinks for guests.  


Yesterday I decided it was time to start on the yard.  In order to not be overwhelmed, I've figured out that I will take one section at a time and work on it.  Plus, the Yardy fills up quickly, so it's either do a little at a time, or have a big pile of dead vegetation in the back yard waiting until the next week.  And it saves my back and legs.  Did you know gardening is a great kick--butt leg workout?  Just try it.  You'll see that night and the next day that you can't move your legs much.  Building muscle!


My neighbor has a long fence along one side of my yard, and I have planted lots of hostas along the fence line.  This was my first area of destruction:


My sad lookin' hostas
Hostas are pretty indestructible.  After all, it only takes one leaf to make a whole new plant!  All of these hostas began as just one leaf each.  Bud bought them at a garage sale years ago, brought over the bucket, and says "Here you go!  Have fun planting!"  Yep.  Took me a few days.  


After about an hour of hard work, here are my results:


No more hostas!
Next week, I'm finishing off the rest of this run along the fence.  I still have the side of my house to take care of, and last but not least, the garden out back that had a bad summer.  I whacked a few things down, but was too disheartened and overwhelmed to keep going.  More sunny, cool weather is in store, so I should have plenty of backyard time next week.  I did find a few things blooming in my front yard garden:
Autumn Joy Sedum

Mums gone wild
Time to get out the pumpkins and ready the rake for some leaf action!  So looking foward to that.  Not.

3 comments:

  1. Anything in my yard MUST be indestructible (no green thumb here) so I love my hostas. Your sedum and mums are gorgeous!

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  2. You're SUPPOSED to cut hostas back? Ummmmm, I've just been letting them kinda, you know -die on their own. Maybe this is why my blogging wins awards, but not my gardening attempts :-P

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  3. C-Joy- you can whack pretty much any perennial down and it will come back the next year...learned that from Dee. And so far, everything has come back!

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