Just like Goldilocks I like the weather not too cold, not too hot, just comfortably warm. Although not too warm. A little breeze is helpful. And when you're working in the garden even clouds are useful to shelter the hard-working gardener from the hot stare of the sun.

Yesterday's weather conditions provided all of that, and it was quite helpful to my resolve to finally get some action going on cleaning up the gardens. A start on it, in any event. For there is a lot of clean-up to be done when the growing season is at its stalemate between nudging new growth into life and staggering back into the soil, to await another winter's passage before spring renewal.

So, I collected the tools I needed, secateurs and shears and other types of snips, long-handled and short, to begin the adventure in close-cropping old greenery to make the garden nice and tidy awaiting late fall, when it's far too cold, blustery, wet and miserable to do all of that. It's far easier now than it was years ago when I also had to winter-blanket some sensitive plants which have since hardened off to our Canadian winters.

For many years, while the first of our magnolias was struggling to maturity I used to protect it by entirely blanketing it. Along with holly and rhododendron, azaleas and even yews. None of these specimens any longer get covered. Some of our roses do, but not the Explorer series or other tough customers like rugosa roses. I even stopped covering my tree peonies and though it's more of a struggle for them, they too manage to survive the winter - although they're slower in recovering come spring.

So I began yesterday by snipping off the long, overgrown spears of lilies and irises, cut back the peonies and the ligalarium, the astilbes, tickseed, Chinese lanterns, bleeding hearts, Jacob's ladder, ferns, bee balm, geraniums, phlox, echinacea and other spent perennials. The hostas can wait and so can the clematis, the black-eyed Susans, Ladies mantle, and other things. Because by then I had run out of energy.

And five paper compostable bags, four feet in height were full to the brim. Moreover, I was feeling not only exhausted but extremely warm and needed a break. Looking around, it hardly seems as though I've begun the process. There is just so much more needing to be done before all looks neat and tidy and prepared for winter.

And then, I must remember to plant the new allium bulbs, and the grape hyacinths for their lovely spring showing.