I hadn't really thought of all the uses beneficial insects have for the garden during the colder months. Thanks for the enlightenment! Another good book that has been in my library for decades is " The Living Garden: the 400-year history of an English Garden". In one chapter they discuss the actual amounts of organisms per unit of soil. I found it fascinating and informative.

Beans are all done. Plants mostly pulled and fed to goats. Tomatoes and peppers still producing. They're way late this year. Toms will probably end up having to ripen indoors. Still pulling a few zucchini, some kale and chard and have a few more onions in the ground. We may get frost this week. I've been working with gleaners and have 200+ lbs. of apples to press into cider, make pie filling and more sauce. I picked 60 lb. of Mirabelle Plums yesterday and have to decide what to do with them. Tiny but tasty little things. They're ripe NOW unfortunately. Oh....and I start school full time on Monday. No problem! Yeah. Right. I love this time of year, but I'm glad when it's finally over and there isn't any fresh produce demanding my attention. Soon....very soon.... However, my favorite local farm has their closing sale on November 1st. I always go stock up on winter squash and whatever else I am short. They slash prices for 2 days, then are closed until spring. Ya gotta be there early! Most of the stuff I buy doesn't require any or at least not immediate processing. Thank goodness! Deanna

Yes, the ecological situation is now extremely DIRE! Currently due largely to wild habitat destruction - Humanity has wiped out 60% of animal populations since 1970!!! And yet even in the middle of our planet's 6th MASS EXTINCTION...our POTUS has just absurdly and wrongly recommended the complete opposite here! President Donald Trump had a word of advice about stopping future blazes: “Raking.” “You’ve got to take care of the floors. You know the floors of the forest, very important,” Trump noted Saturday surrounded by the devastation of the burned town of Paradise in northern California. “I was with the president of Finland and he said, ‘We have a much different —we’re a forest nation.’ He called it a forest nation, and they spent a lot of time on raking and cleaning and doing things. And they don’t have any problem. And when they do, it’s a very small problem,” Trump said. (Niinistö said that he doesn’t recall raking ever coming up during his brief interaction with Trump earlier this month.)

Timely article. Like some others I normally wait for spring to clean up but only in some areas. My front bed, i like to do some to neaten it up. I leave a back area away from the house, intact for the winter. I still trim by hand with pruners or heavy duty scissors. I dislike hedge trimmers I've used due to the condition of the branch after the cut. They always seem to make a mess. And how do you sharpen those too? At least with the electric saw, you just replace the blade. I got rid of hedges so I wouldn't have to use them. [g] We still have Taxus and Hollies, but I prefer to do those by hand. Maybe I should try using the electric saw on them now. We do have a small reciprocating electric saw tha we seem to use as a last resort when pruning shrubs. I haven't tried that on perennials or grasses. Like Babs, we find vibration and weight an issue after long periods of time using it. I have golden thyme growing as a ground cover around the ends of my raised veggie beds and it is a real chore to get that trimmed back in the spring. It has become a large patch and it is carefree once it is trimmed for the season. It blooms and is great for pollinators, it is tough and you can walk on it and treat it like grass. A few weeks ago I had the brainstorm to mow it with the mower. Why didn't I think of that long ago? [g] It worked very well. It did cut it back to bare branches in some places which is not a problem. I set the mower on the lowest setting. It was not pleasing to look at for a couple of weeks, but it's growing well again. So next year, I will wait until the season is just about over to do it, or I could wait for the spring to do it too. I did still have to take the scissors to the edges that meet the wooden beds where the mower couldn't get that close. It was much quicker and easier and I think it does just as good a job.