In the garden of this household, clearing away and cleaning up before November arrives with its initial winter-permanent ground frost is not a casual affair. In a sense there may be a casual air about it, since the process began, as it always does, months ago. Cutting back here and there spent perennials with the certainty that it helps, even a little bit by bit, to prepare the garden for winter.

 

It's a long process, one that must seem tedious to most people, but I don't particularly find it onerous or  unpleasant. Strangely enough, the garden that we enjoy so much during the blooming season holds no grudge against me for maintaining that schedule. There is irony there in that I take a certain pleasure in the orderly preparations toward putting the garden to sleep for the winter months.

 

It means plucking out all the annuals, cutting back the perennials, judiciously trimming the rose canes, snipping shrubs and lopping dead branches off trees. It's time-consuming and laborious and often awkward trimming the hostas and the hydrangeas. We've so many hostas, in the garden beds and borders in the backyard, the rock garden, the shade garden and the garden at the front of the house. Some of them were already victims of light frost, others still looked fairly fresh, but they all were snipped.

 

Not quite all, as efficiently as I tried to be there are still some hostas awaiting their turn. This day's work in the garden comprises one of the last of the Big Push in preparation for winter. I emptied some of the garden pots of their annuals, but not all; I left those whose floral offerings remained fresh and perky. The most difficult part of emptying pots is unearthing the canna lilies and dracaena plants that become rootbound. The pots themselves have to be emptied of their garden soil, the soil wheelbarrowed to the backyard where it can be deposited in the border alongside the back fence. 

 

This weekend has turned out to be sunny and mild temperatured, albeit windy. So those plants that still thrive can continue to do so until the weather reverts once again to cold, wet and windy.

 

We took Jackie and Jillie out for their ravine walk earlier than usual today. And because today was so lovely, and there are still some colourful deciduous crowns whose foliage hasn't completely deserted their lofty perches, the landscape is still a picture of vibrant beauty here and there, the forest floor matching the colour above, like a mirror image seen in the placid water of a lake within a forest setting.

From time to time in our hour-and-a-half toddle through the forest trails, we came across passles of people representing extended family member groups. Such groups tend to favour the high, flat areas, trails meander through, rarely descending the ravine to the more energy-demanding hills and valleys. So there were busy areas and quiet areas; the sight of a fall forest irresistible to many people.

 

We returned home early enough, at 1:30 p.m. for me to anticipate enough time set aside to get as much work done as my energy level could sustain. And that turned out to be 2-1/2 hours. How many giant, heavily-packed compost bags did I fill? Five full and the sixth could take another half-bag-full of vegetation waste, but I ran out of energy. Jackie and Jillie were curiously sniffing about, attention fixed now and again on rare passersby and it was time to retreat.

The garden beds and borders have taken on a woeful look of regret, their glory days over. They look quite forlorn. It will be interesting to see what will have survived the heavy trampling in the border garden at the very back of the house with the installation of the new fence. Lilies, peonies, hostas, irises all flattened and crushed though they had all been cut back and trimmed prior to the arrival of the fencing crew. Spring will tell its own story of loss or survival.