My grand plan to put the frost sensitive plants on the south side of the house/fence to protect them from the wind tunnel created from the neighbor's oak trees met a tactical flaw in the plan: 3 days of bone chilling nights. But at least I found out what plants I added last summer can laugh at the cold... My Achillia, dill, blue-eyed grass, most of my mints, an almond scented plant that I think is a cultivar of a butterfly-bush, and amazingly enough my shrimp plant are all quite happy that the plants next to them are gone and they can stretch their branches easier. I guess they get to stay and I'll try again with their neighbors. My papaya is really really REALLY upset with me, and considering the rotten vegetation smell its giving off, I don't think its going to pull through. But I'll wait an see what happens. I totally forgot to protect my kiwi and it looks equally upset. Hopefully it'll grow back from the ground. My varigated devil's backbone is also very annoyed, but I know from last year it will come back just as strong. The lantana, pentas, and Persian Shield got killed to the ground but I can already see the pentas coming back and assume the others will as well. My in-ground plumeria and ti plants are also upset with me and those concern me the most. The ti will come back since you have to practically put them in a wood chipper to kill them and cutting them back like this encourages bushiness, but it would be nice if they could survive a year or two to fully develop their leaves. My green ti will get 20" leaves if left alone long enough.

None at all. You can mow as long as the lawn itself, at the time of the mow, is unfrozen. Or, if it's brown, even if it is frozen. It's not like mowing a dead lawn is going to cause damage...the leaves are dead! But I wait until it gets warmer out there because I dislike being cold.

One night we had goodly hard frost . Temps were -4 celcius 24.8 Farenheit . We have also had snow thanks to a storm that blew through up from the USA on November 2nd. It didn't stick around but was depressing to see snow so soon. Not sure why but Houzz wont let me post an image of the snow ??? anyone else experiencing this ? Figured it out . For some reason the image was saved on my computer as a jfif file??? Not sure why or how . However, I had to convert it to a jpg file for Houzz to allow it to upload. Now we are in a heat wave , last day supposed to be tomorrow and then the temps drop dramatically.

On impulse, I checked one of my bulbs catalogs today. It stated that ground temperature should be 55 degrees F or below, and nighttime temps consistently below 40 F. I've never tested soil temperature before, and don't have the tools for it. I guess normally I am so busy in the fall, that planting bulbs "too early" has never been an issue. Too busy cleaning dead stuff out to even have a bare surface to plant into. I induced a friend to order a lot of bulbs - she's never planted bulbs before - so I was hoping to give her some solid advice.