Garden 2012 no 23

Garden 2012 no 23

It’s November, it’s getting cold out there and my gardening days are almost done for this year. Today I dug over the other small plot. Sometimes I wish I had a bigger garden and then I remember I couldn’t manage a bigger garden any more. When the weather is warm and dry enough I actually quite like this time of year in the garden. Its tidy up and put away time, and I find it quite satisfying to be tidying up and getting ready for the next year. I now have both little plots dug, weeded and de-stoned. If the weather is kind I expect I’ll go out again and give it another dig and remove some more stones.
I’ve been removing stones all year, I don’t know why but I kept them, well there’s nothing I could do with them and I’ve no where to put them so I had to keep them. And this is it, a whole years worth of stones, where on earth did they all come from? And what am I going to do with them? If I keep accumulating them at this rate I’ll run out of places to keep them. I think my garden produces stones better than it produces any thing else, shame I can’t use them.
My daughter came to see me while I was digging, she has offered to over winter the geraniums in her green house. I use them to deter pests and as a bonus, the flowers make the garden bright and cheery. But geraniums don’t survive much more that the first frost and there was ice on my pond this morning. I usually bring them indoors and they flower all year. They look great on the window sills but the down side is they smell awful, my charming granddaughter tells me geraniums smell like cats pee, she has a point. So problem solved for this year, I’ve dug them up, re-potted them and on Tuesday they will go to the green house for the winder, lets hope there is no severe frost before then.
I offered her some strawberry plants, mine threw out a lot of runners this year but she said her strawberries did really well and then were all eaten by her dogs before she could pick them. She refuses to plant any more just to feed the dogs. I guess I can understand that. I’ve re-planted the best of them and it looks as if I’m going to have another two tubs of strawberries next year which will be great for the jam making.
After that I did a little cutting back and trimming up on the shrubs, swept piles and piles of leaves into the compost and then called it a day. I may go out there again next weekend and dig it over again, or take some more weeds out of the slabs, or tie the last few bits back, or maybe trim some of the fruit canes back, or just do some more de-stoning. There will always be odd little jobs to do if I want to, but generally speaking, I guess I’m done for the year. It’s a bit sad when the garden closes down for the winter.