Sunday, October 22, 2017

Just Thoughts

The weather is feeling like fall. Cool nights in the 40's with 70's during the day. I welcome fall and winter but that time before turning on the heat indoors chills me to the bone especially at night. Being a woman of a certain age I'm sometimes cold and put on my soft fleece pajamas. A few minutes later they're off, my face dotted with sweat and the window is open. 

Today didn't go as planned. I hoped to clean up the yard once again of those plants like some canna that have died down and need to be removed from their containers and the bulbs placed in the basement for the winter. The yard needs raking, not so much due to leaves yet but from seeds falling from the trees covering the ground. Hopefully I'll stay put at home tomorrow and get something accomplished. Fall and winter have become my favorite times to garden indoors.

Two new clearance plants have donated their lives to our home this fall. A bird of paradise and a fiddle leaf fern (sorry I meant fig). They weren't the prettiest but hopefully can be nursed back to health or death. You know fall brings out my desire for impulse plant buying and paying closer attention to my house plants, force bulbs, prepare the seed self for sowing seeds, and making plans for the porch that may not be accomplished. I have all winter. My to do list:

1. Take pots from the shed and neatly stack them on the porch so I actually can use them.

2. Clean the seed shelf so I can start some seeds early that take a long time to reach a good size like vinca and begonias. Begonias also take a long time to germinate almost a month. 

3. Prepare pots of bulbs for the porch and the yard.

4, Prepare hyacinths for forcing.

5. Buy 2 new amaryllis.

6. Try to wait for the first frost and remove sweet potatoes from ornamental sweet potato vines and put in basement until spring.

7. Remove dead leaves from 2 Martha Washington pelargoniums on the porch and bring them inside. Spray them first before bring inside.

8. Bring in other plants from the porch including palm, impatien, and 2 house plants. Let the Thanksgiving cactus stay on the porch hopefully until it sets buds then bring it inside.

9. Order a small selection of seeds and use old seeds that I have first.

10. Take an inventory of what seed starting supplies I already have and what I need to buy.

11. Clean seed starting trays. An unpleasant job for me.

12. Start organizing the house for Thanksgiving. Buy spices, sugar, and dry items for holiday baking.

13. Finish exterior home repairs including porch roof and stucco. The main roof was reconditioned during the summer.

14. Start planting bulbs in the yard and out front. If you've followed this blog for a while, you know this usually doesn't happen yet sometimes until the first snow flake. As long as the soil can still be worked you can plant bulbs.

15. Finally, sit by the fire and drink coffee, hot chocolate, can't leave out tea, and watch the snow fall. Until it's time to shovel. And of course around January lust over plants in the arriving seed catalogs, and complain that I've done nothing on this too do list and worry when it'll get done. Till tomorrow.

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