Now that the garden has finally been prepared for winter onset, satisfaction on that level has been achieved. What remains is a few more pieces of garden furniture to be stored and all the 'stone' and ceramic urns and pots to be covered. A few of the roses still going strong will have to be cut back and other perennials lightly winterized; a bit of soil mounded around hibiscus and rose of sharon, and one of the tree peonies has yet to be trimmed of its foliage up to next spring's nascent flower buds. 

 

It's tiring, regretful work to dig out annuals and compost them, tidying up the garden so that everything is prepared for its deep winter sleep. That said, it also builds up an appetite so the spaghetti and meatballs that Irving mentioned he was missing was just perfect for dinner last night. I had prepared the meatballs much earlier and refrigerated them, so only the sauce had to be prepared; another opportunity to use the mushrooms, tomatoes, bell peppers, onion and garlic languishing in their long wait to be used.

Today was laundry day so that took awhile with four big loads. A heavily overcast day again. There were light snow flurries early in the morning, then the day settled into its cold and overcast formula we've been met with lately. We set out in mid-afternoon, a little earlier than usual for us, and dressed a little more carefully than yesterday to ward off the probing fingers of the wind.

 

Now, there is foliage left mostly on the more immature of the Beech and Ironwood trees. Their bronze colour is quite similar, so unless you look at the bark of the tree it's hard to tell which they are. But they'll hold on to their leaves all winter and won't release them until spring when new foliage begins to emerge. They provide the only bit of colour in the white months when everything is a monochrome of black-and-white.

We felt more comfortable today, so decided to make our tramp through the woods longer than usual, and Jackie and Jillie agreed that seemed appropriate. We came across some of their friends we hadn't seen in a while and cookies were dispensed accordingly. They're always so engagingly polite, even though we may not have seen them in quite a while. Patiently seating themselves in front of Irving while he fumbles around with his cookie bag to extract cookies for them.

 

We passed the oldest wild apple tree in the forest in an area that hosts a number of apple trees. At one time the ravine was surrounded by farms and it's likely that the seeds of those apple trees were carried into the forest on the boots of the farm children that used to play in the woods. The old tree is huge and many-branched and this was a good year for fruit-bearing plants. We haven't been that way for quite some time, and were surprised to see the generosity of fruit that landed on the forest floor under the old tree.

We carried on, visiting old haunts on other trails, saw squirrels scurrying about in their fall frenzy to collect pine, hemlock and spruce cones for winter storage. It's been a good year for the cones produced by the forest's many conifers as well.