These are morose-weather days of late. The sky is so overcast there is a perpetual gloom over the day. It has become extremely cold and windy. Damp and blustery, more like what we expect for November than October, but the month, to be sure, is indeed edging toward its conclusion when November will make its entrance. We always think of November as being the bleakest of months, and it is. As a result, we welcome December for at least then we can anticipate snow to enliven and brighten the landscape.

November is never a sunny month, but most other months are, here in the Ottawa Valley. October has been behaving too much like November for our liking. Moreover, we've been getting more than what we might consider to be our fair share of rain; it seems unending, and the result is a soggy mess.

Yesterday we were busy with fall preparations. My husband completed his construction of a bird/squirrel feeding station to complement the bird feeder with the squirrel-avoidance baffle, and set it out near the front garden where it will remain throughout the winter months. When he finished with that he set about putting winter ice-tires on his little Nissan truck.

As for me, when I finished cleaning the house, a weekly chore that I don't at all mind, I went out to the gardens to finish taking up all the annuals, and reserving the begonia corms for over-wintering storage. I discovered last fall when I was busy doing the same thing that I'm no longer able to harvest some of the new begonias for their corms, they appear to have been genetically bred to bloom summer-long, without the corms, though heaven knows how. So most of those that I am able to gather in now are comprised of the very begonias I've been over-wintering for years. Later additions to the gardens from newer nursery stock are a different story. Puzzling indeed.

And, today, another dismal cold, wet and windy day, I finally completed planting all of the spring-blooming bulbs for the year. And if truth should be told, I must admit that weather aside and the sad task of pulling up still-sprightly-and-colourful annuals besides, it remains pleasurable to be out there doing anything at all, from heading out on our daily ravine rambles to tidying up the garden in preparation for  winter. Regardless of the weather.