First Frost

Last night it was just below freezing and this morning everything was covered in frost.  I'd beavered away yesterday yanking out the basil and making a simple pesto with the wonderful trial plants I'd got from Loblaws (grown by Freeman Herbs) - Ocimum basilicum 'Greek Columnar'.  I like its boxwood like shape and use it as a border in my veggie garden.

My gardening style is certainly less formal elsewhere, but because of the nature of vegetables and the fact that the garden is in my front garden, I like it to look like it's conforming to some sort of rule.  This variety of basil has a small leaf and is stronger flavoured than the larger leafed varieties.  One of its main strengths is that it can withstand cold far better than many other varieties.  I was delighted to see what great shape the leaves were in considering it was the end of October and the temperatures had been hovering around 5C at night for close to a week.

The one plant I didn't get inside was the Banana - will go out and apologize this afternoon, dig it up and toss it in a brown refuse bag and dump it in the basement.  Hopefully it will recover from the indignity of being left out to freeze only to get the brownbagbasementbanishment treatment.  Here it was last week growing happily with the basil

Even though we'd had coloured leaves, it's not autumn in my books until I see the first frost.

Frosty pine needles.

The view down by the lake this a.m. was just gorgeous.

Isn't this a giggle......Nothing like a good frost on the ground to signal, "I better get out there and do some fall fertilizing." Poor guy had to keep stopping - think his spreader was getting jammed with the frost.  You can see how neat and tidy he's being - look at the frosty checkerboard he's made.

And the best yellow leaves of the morning go to this lovely Ginkgo biloba - just so pretty against the blue October sky.