It's a Day in the Garden for Me

Various duties, infirmities, and conspiring weather have kept me out of the garden.  I'd been delaying bringing the big pots in - well, the process of bringing the big pots in.....  You know how you're supposed to wash the leaves carefully several times with soap - not detergent.  Make a soapy bucket of water and pour it over the soil in the pot - remove the dead and floating insects - give the soil another good drench of water - drain carefully.  Polish the pot.  Inspect the plant for bad bits.  Remove them.  Prepare that special place in the basement.  Move the rack with the extra tins of food.  Convince your husband to move the golf-clubs to the hockey equipment area of the basement.  Clean the windows that you can now get to because the rack has been moved. And now with the special spot all nice and ready, you bring the prepared plants to live for a cruel Canadian winter in the toasty dry basement.

Unfortunately I'd dragged my feet for so long, that when I realized it was going to be 1C last night, I skipped all these steps and just had Kevin do an emergency 'get the kids inside before they turn into tropical slime' manoeuvre.    No doubt while we slept the insects we've transported inside have begun to set up their headquarters and have a large white-board showing them where the other plants are in the house and the quickest way to them - perhaps starting with golf-bag colonization?

Not too many photos today, as you might have suspected, if I'm that far behind with the tropicals, you can only imagine the chaos of the rest of the garden.  Photo-documentation to follow.  So here are a few October walk shots and specifically how not to prune a maple - brought to you by our trusty Oakville Hydro suppliers.

This is the corner bed that was run through by a car in a previous summer.  I've got a fair bit of new plant material, and this wonderful little Dahlia Dahlinova Hypnotica Cotton Candy that is just blooming its head off.  As long as the weather doesn't get too cold, it looks as if I'll have a blooms for a while.

Liriodendron tulipifera with splotches of yellow in its green canopy.

Earlier this week in the meadow with Bart - both Bart and the wind conspired for the wobbly shot.

Had I staged this, I would have carefully removed that blade of grass in this maple leaf shot (and improved the final result).  Sadly Bart is uninterested in staging, but the photo does serve as an introduction to the next shot which is titled:

Crimes Against Maples:

I'm so glad this one is in the backyard.

Can't see the forest for the trees - well, here in Oakville, we make sure our urban trees have big holes in them so it's easy to see the Spruce behind (through the maple).

The odd thing now is if you approach the tree from the other direction, the tree has once again grown around the wires, and the big old hole in the centre doesn't appear to be doing anything?  Certainly looks like a beautiful tree from this angle.