Clean Up, Clean Up, Everybody Clean Up!

I stopped at a friend's house last week and found her dragging many bags of plant material out of her gardens.  I did the same in my gardens and they look refreshed as the leaves fall from the trees after several days of rain.  A night with freezing temperatures took most of the color away, but I did cover the planters with cloth to protect their blooms.  My front planter looks better than it has all year! Since it is dark now (at 6:24 p.m.), I'll take a photo tomorrow of the Mexican Heather in sunlight--if we have any!

I just checked my phone for any photos of "Garden Moments" I might have missed and found some! These are from a late September trip to Nantucket to celebrate our September birthdays.

At Bartlett's Farm, we saw some great fall borders.

And in town, the window boxes were still full of color.

So, I cleaned my garden borders and my camera of photos, but I can't put the garden tools away yet.

I have some bags of manure to spread on the perennials and I have some "plugs" to plant by November 1 and seeds to scatter by November 15.  And I thought I had closed down shop for the year!

I attended a seminar on "Meadows, Large or Small" at the CT Forest and Park Association Saturday. The speaker, Kathy Connolly, of SpeakingofLandscapes.com had some plugs of native meadow grasses and native meadow plants.  I bought Swamp Milkweed and New England Aster and she gave us Little Blue Stem and 'Blue Heron' Blue Fescue grasses. She also gave us a container of seeds of Pilgrim Coastal Hairgrass.  More on this in another post on another day.