Before the leaves start to fall in earnest, I like to get in some "minor" fixes. Our old Newtown Pippin apple tree was close to falling over so we had to prune about one third of the front branches off. It is still leaning but I'm hoping it will hang in there. We harvested lots of apples, most with worms but we cut around those and made a nice pie and some sauce. The deer got the rest.
We added yet more lattice to our north garden fence...to hold the vines and ivy and to block out the view of the neighbor's house and dismal, unkempt yard.
Pumpkins, antiques and fall foliage make a nice combination! We're decked out for the season...my favorite time of year!
That's the word around here these days. Right after my last root appointment, in late June, I decided that it was time to quit spending so much time (and money) at the "beauty saloon" as Jack calls it. So I've been growing my silver and my stylist has been cutting off the warm brown tint. I've one more haircut to go in October and all the tint will be gone. Then it's just my "original hair" growing out, which turns out to be more of an ash brown in the back, along with the silver in the front.
I feel lucky that my stylist, Joy, is so supportive. She says lots of her clients get to this point and can't get through the grow out stage. So they resort to color again. Too bad! I've discovered that having much shorter hair is so nice and easy. Maybe I'll just keep getting frequent cuts and watching the silver take over.
Here in the Rogue Valley we are experiencing an early autumn this year, it seems. Night temps in the low 40's mean that most veggies just stop doing much. Usually we have rather hot temps until almost the end of the month but not this year. Probably means we'll have a lot of green tomatoes to ripen indoors. But I'm not complaining because the cooler temps are so nice!
So I'm madly dumping pots, planting some things into the ground and putting some things in bigger pots. Time to "activate" my pot washing sink (a laundry tray that my under gardener installed mainly for just this purpose)...washing up pots before I store them away for winter. I bring out a bucket of hot, sudsy water and turn it into mud, basically, as I scrub out the insides. It usually takes several times changing out the water to get all the pots cleaned. I let them dry out for a couple of days so that if I want to stack them, they won't freeze together in the winter.
Our weather has taken a decidedly "fallish" feel so I've been gathering up all the succulents that won't survive this winter in our Sunset Zone 7. Turns out that's a lot of 'em!
But first I had to clean out and paint the interior of my tiny greenhouse. I used Miller Storm in "boxwood" which bears no resemblance to the real color of boxwood! But I like it as it is a sort of a sage green although it looks very blue here.
I added some small shelves at the back of the counters to raise up plants so I could get to them more easily.
We even activated the heater (lower left of photo) last night as it got down into the mid 40's. That's a Kalanchoe blooming away on the left. Looks like I'm almost maxed out and I still have a Meyer lemon and a geranium to shoe horn in! How did I get so many succulents anyway?
