fall gardening

It didn't rain today and the sun was out. It was a perfect cool fall day for gardening. Pat emptied pots and condensed others with hearty flowers. All the plants went into the compost pile. The excess dirt got dumped where we can use it later. I dug ligularia out of the nursery bed. The ligularia grew better than planned. We have 17 good sized plants for our friends and neighbors. As much as I love ligularia, I'm at a loss where I could put another plant. It is such a cool feeling giving plants away. We filled the nursery with hosta that were in pots. They wouldn't survive the winter in the pots. We'll either leave them or find new homes in the spring. We want to use the nursery for distressed hosta. Deer chow down on the first hosta that pops up in the spring, so we rehab them in the bed next to the sun room. I hope weekends are dry and sunny till December, but this is northeast Ohio, so it can snow tommorrow.

soil tiles

We use soil tiles and chimney flues for flower pots in the back yard. We found a supply house in Akron that specializes in construction tile about 5 years ago. The guys in the shop looked at Pat and me like we had a third eye or something, but they were happy to take our money. The tiles have done a marvelous job for us. The vinca vines we planted in one of them defies logic every year and keeps coming back, like the perennial it isn't supposed to be this far north. The last couple of years the dappled willow has grown so large that the tiles near it are under constant shade. Well, I don't know why we decided to move them today, but we did. Our best ideas come to us when we're in the yard working. So right in the middle of two seperate projects, we moved two tiles into the light. When we got done, Pat and I both wondered why the tiles hadn't always been where we put them.

it glows

The yard has taken on a golden tone. Even though its been raining all day and there's no sun (probably won't see it again till April), you needed sun glasses in the back yard. The leaves just shimmered, especially when the wind blew. I thought of a line from that Tom Waits song, "Franks Wild Years". The yard was "all Halloween orange and chimney red".

Most of my neighbors are out using leaf blowers to clean up their yards. It's fun watching them out every day just to do it all over and over again, and again. I like the look of the leaves all over the ground. If it dries up, I'll mow the leaves to mulch. It's better for the yard and the environment (alright, alright, I haven't gone all gooey eyed). It's also so much easier.

blog name

I've often been asked about the name of my blog. The blog's title roughly translates to: there's no horse too dead to beat. This comes from an old and cherished family tradition of never finishing any discussion, to wit: what Aunt Florence did to or with Uncle Harold's leather coat in 1937, how Roosevelt (that's FDR, not TR) sold Poland to the communists (actually it was Churchill), or whether Nixon was just plain evil or really, really evil pop up on occasion. Any and everything is fair game.

All these discussions are part of who we are, and happen during large family get togethers. Newcomers are expected to join in what might be considered the family sport. The result is normally a chuckle caused by a memory of someone still loved and missed. Before any of us gets too misty eyed, someone says "whose deal" and we get back to engaging in the other family tradition of a friendly, but aggresive game of cards. Every once in a while, for grins and giggles, someone will set someone off for sport, like saying "Beck's" to a certain unnamed relative or telling another that China is our friend.

No horses are involved in this blog. It is a figure of speech. Welcome to the discussion, We'll keep a chair open for you.

I can't imagine a post without a picture, so here's one of Pat and me.

holding on

It's as if our garden is shouting "We're not dead yet". It's strange how the lanciflolia, which is the first hosta up, is the last one to fade.

ready for flight

The first killer frost is any day now. Almost as a shout against death, these plants are sending their legacy out into the world.

feeding the deer

Just when I thought the deer were leaving the impatiens alone, look what happened. The soil tiles are all munched out. Maybe deer know when a frost is coming, so waste not, want not, and they chow down. The only legal way to hunt deer in Cuyahoga County is with vehicles. Somehow I don't think Pat would be happy about me sitting in the Aztec waiting for deer. I mean this isn't Wisconsin.

our ash tree

Ash trees are the first to lose their leaves. I use the plural sorta loosely because ours is the last one left in the neighborhood. The Red Chinese Borer Beetle has devastated these trees in Ohio. Some of my friends and relatives think that the Chi-Com military is the real enemy of America. I on the other hand think that defective Red Chinese-made Christmas lights with invasive plant-eating Red Chinese bugs tagging along in the pallets are the real enemy. To add insult to injury, the invasive bugs hitting Ohio came from Michigan. As an adopted son of Ohio, I gotta agree that nothing good ever comes out of Michigan.