Oh what a beautiful day!!! I just spent 2.5 hrs working in the Bermuda bed. And it was FUN! Tiny was helping, I'd throw a root out of the bed; he'd fetch it and bring it back in. I was laughing so hard at him!

I thought I saw smoke coming from the back of a neighbor's yard, so I walked over to take a look. It was an enormous burn pile, but it was surrounded on all sides by 5 or so trees, and piles of dead leaves. I went to the neighbors' door and knocked, but no one answered! (I think they were home though.) So I came back home and told Garry; he walked over and looked. He agreed it was not a good deal. Well I could see it from the Bermuda bed, so decided to go ahead and weed, keeping an eye on it. We wondered if maybe someone had tried to start it and decided it didn't start. So yep, sure enough, the wind came up; and I hear the fire snapping and popping--looked over and it was huge! The flames were probably a good 6 feet tall and probably 6 feet in diameter, too. Again, not a soul in site. So I came and got Garry again, and we went over with our shovels. I beat the fire out where it had spread to the leaves, as that could have been a major problem, and then we just stood there for probably half an hour until the major parts had burned. The neighbor may have seen us walking back past their house to our place, as he went down there on his golf cart a few minutes later. ARRGGHHH.

But it was STILL a beautiful day. :) GDW had winterized the boat last week; so he unwinterized it yesterday so we can have one more day of fishing tomorrow. Hahaha!

I haven't planted garlic yet. Need to get that done soon. I have to find some more dirt, first. Maybe. And Amy! We have a nice-sized dogwood that would like a new home. . . . and a baby one, too.

Thanks for the information on artichokes, Dawn. I'm going to try and keep these alive. I bought them as plants that were delivered in April, but because it was first so cold, and then suddenly turned so hot, they never DID do anything until this fall. NOW of course they're going like gangbusters. Would frost covers work, or would you recommend a more permanent sort of warmer for the plants? I certainly can mulch them heavily.

Nancy, It drives me crazy when people burn irresponsibly and carelessly. A couple of years ago a family in a town near us lost their home and everything in it when a neighbor of theirs was burning on a very windy day and lost control of his brush/trash pile. This seemed to me like an especially tough loss to them because all the photos and memorabilia they had left of their recently deceased daughter was lost in that fire too, just sort of adding insult to injury. I thought the woman who lost her newly-remodeled home was much more forgiving and gracious than I could have/would have been in similar circumstances. While it was extremely fortunate that only the one home was lost that day, several other residents lost other property---sheds, barns, a tractor, maybe a deck or wooden porch, fences, children's yard toys that burned, etc., all because 1 person made a bad decision on a windy day. So, like you, I'm always going to keep an eye on nearby smoke plumes and would do the same thing you and GDW did to perhaps avert disaster.

I hope y'all have a good day on the lake.

I think our forecast improved over time this weekend/early week. We originally were supposed to have lovely warm weather on Sat/Sun only, but now the warm weather has been stretched out to include Monday and Tuesday as well. Since warm, sunny days are becoming increasingly more rare as we move more deeply into autumn, I'm doing my best to appreciate having these days even though it means we have to watch more closely for snakes.

With the artichokes, I think it really is all about keeping the roots warm, so I'd just mulch and hope for the best. They are ridiculously easy from seed started in January, so you could start some seeds indoors if you feel uneasy about their odds of surviving the winter. They've actually done better in winter than I expected over the years, so I don't fret over them too much. I just enjoy them for however long they last and don't fret or worry when I lose them. I just replant and roll on. My artichoke plants survived the horrific rainfall of April 2009 when a little over a foot of rain fell in 24 hours, causing sand and dirt up to 4" deep to wash into the low end of my garden from the neighboring property uphill next door. I already had the artichoke/sweet corn planted there mulched with about 4" of mulch and then ended up with all that sand on top of the mulch. The artichokes tolerated that mess much better than the sweet corn did. I've never bothered to put artichokes in a raised bed since they are huge space hogs (I space them 4-5 feet apart), but they probably would do even better in raised beds.

Since Sunday was such a pretty day, Tim did some more mowing for a while and he was, once again, all lost in the zen of mowing until I went running out there, fire radio in hand, to summon him to get off the mower and respond to an emergency call. (That's an all-too-common problem around here virtually every time he is trying to be at one with his riding mower, it seems.) He tried to return to mowing when he got back, but I had other plans for him, so he spent the rest of the day indoors helping me with a small home improvement project.

We still have endless mud and puddles. I was hoping two days of sunlight and heat would dry them up, but that didn't happen and having two more days of sunlight and autumn heat probably won't help much more either. The upside to all the record-setting rain in Sept/Oct is that our drought ended, but the downside is all the endless mud and puddles (breeding mosquitoes) everywhere.

Every time we walk in or out an exterior door, lady bugs rush inside, so I guess the daily routine of vacuuming them up with the shop vac begins now.....it is as much a part of autumn as falling leaves and prairie grasses going to seed.

Our trees in our neighborhood with yellow/golden foliage likely peaked around Friday or Saturday and their color clearly was in decline yesterday, beginning the process of fading to a dull golden brown. Oh well, the color was fun while it lasted. Now that so many of the yellows and golds have peaked, the reds are starting to come on strong. There's still plenty of other trees with green foliage, and I'm guessing most of those will just eventually turn brown and fall as that is more typical with most of the trees we have here. Some Chinese Pistache trees around the area are simply gloriously orange-red right now and really are stars in the autumn landscapes. The Maximilian sunflowers also are peaking and are just beautiful, and yesterday I saw the largest clump I've ever seen of the native blue-flowered sage (Salvia azurea) in bloom along a fenceline. Usually you just see a random plant here or there (we have too much clay for them in general) but the clump we drove past looked like it was in an area with sandier soil. It was thick and lush and full and in heavy bloom. I loved seeing it.

I looked at flats of pansies in a couple of stores, but they either have been kept too dry or just haven't liked the recent highs in the 80s and looked wilted, yellowed and pathetic, so I didn't buy any.

Dawn

Sadly, I just lost a post. I clicked on something that started some sort of audio that read wherever I moved the arrow. Ugh. I couldn't figure out how to get rid of it. That has never happened before. ANYWAY, I responded to everyone's posts from last week....but I need to get busy now and can't spend another half hour retyping. Hope everyone enjoys the warm day. I'm going to clean the coop and hopefully clean up the garden a bit too. Just waiting for it to warm.

Hello all!

What a busy summer I’ve had. It’s now time to put my garden bed to rest for the winter as all I plant in the fall is garlic. Done! I had a really terrific garden this year and that lifted my spirits so much, last year was a total BUST! Last week I spent a couple of beautiful mornings clearing out the plants that were on their way out. Bye bye peppers, okra and my monster tomato plant. I gently loosened my soil and was so pleased to find the whole space swarming with big squiggly worms! I spread a few inches of my 2017 composted leaves over and now I’ll just sit back and let nature do its thing. Oh! I experimented with some yellow and zucchini squash in the late summer and they really grew but I only was able to harvest a half dozen zucchini by the time I declared them spent. Next year I’ll plant a month earlier and see if I can have more success but I was so pumped not to have any of those devil squash bugs! And speaking of leaves and bugs, my neighbor, who is so generous with his copious amount of maple leaves just stopped by and gifted me four enormous bags! We noticed that there were these types of squash looking bugs attempting to climb out of the bags. They fly and I was able to catch maybe 50 before I accepted the fact that it was a loosing battle and gave up. I’m attaching a picture for anyone who may be able to identity and let me know if I should go ahead and dump them in the compost and let them dry out for a couple of weeks before I shred them. I mean, I figure since they fly, they’ll really go wherever they want and there’s not much I can do about that but I don’t want to invite them to take up residence in my yard and perhaps my garden next year. I asparagus ferns are still green and gorgeous! I just read a post suggeating cutting them to ground level after they turn brown and fertilizing the bed. I did that last year but waited till late winter to do that. Does it really matter? Does it make much difference? Thanks everyone!!! I’m off today and have run all of my errands and have a gorgeous day ahead to enjoy!

Hey Hailey. I also have an ID request.

what should the fate of this guy be?

Jennifer, I just hate when a post disappears like that after I've spent time typing it.

Hailey, Long time no see. Your bug looks similar to stink bugs or brown marmorated stink bugs, but the shoulders don't look quite right so I'm not sure. It could be they are an immature stage of a stink bug or just a stink bug relative. Regardless, I believe they are bad guys. They'll have to overwinter in order to become a problem next year, so I wouldn't worry too much about them now.

Your snake looks like the juvenile stage of an Eastern Rat Snake, but I'm not an expert on the juvenile stages. I mostly just see the adults, which are black and only rarely see the patterned juveniles. Anyhow, if it is an Eastern Rat Snake, it is useful/beneficial as it feeds on all kinds of rodents. I double checked with Tim just now and asked him what he thought it was (without telling him I thought it was a juvenile Eastern Rat Snake), and he told me it was a baby rat snake. So, since we both agree, I am pretty confident saying that is what it is.

It doesn't matter when you cut off the brown asparagus plants---in the fall after they freeze, later in winter or whatever. Do whatever works for you. The only time I'd say it really and truly matters is if you have had a problem with asparagus beetles in the current year. If so, it is better to get the dead plant matter cut off at the ground level and removed from the garden so the asparagus beetles won't overwinter in it.

Nothing special happened here today. It was a nice, warm 85 degrees and windy. It sure didn't seem to help dry up the mud though. More red oaks are showing some really pretty red leaves now, but they sure don't stay red long--just a few days before they fall and turn brown. The persimmon grove west of the barn had to be at its peak today---the leaves were a brilliant orange-yellow. Tomorrow they'll be fading. They were quite a bit later this year than persimmons near the road/fencelines and later than the elms. I noticed that tiger swallowtails and one monarch, as well as numerous smaller butterflies of many types, were in the garden, mainly visiting the pineapple sage and dianthus blooms. The double purple datura remains in bloom, but the white daturas all have gone to seed.

This morning when I went out to feed the deer and the chickens, the doe with triplets was there with her three fawns waiting for me. I hadn't seen her the last couple of days, so it was a relief to see her this morning. The closer we get to the opening of deer season, the less I'll see them. If there's lots of hunters out, they stop coming completely. We don't let anyone hunt on our land, but a lot of the deer don't live on our place---they just come here to feed. So, when it gets too dangerous, they stop coming for a few weeks.

We saw geese headed south yesterday, which was good and made sense. On Saturday morning, Tim saw some headed north, which seems crazy or at least confusing. I imagine those were looking for something to eat.

There were not nearly as many Asian lady bugs trying to come inside today, so either they have found their way into the attic, or they decided to try to overwinter elsewhere. It was a relief to not have to battle my way through thousands of them gathering near the back door.....which is the issue we had from about Wed through Sun.

Dawn

Love the photos! I forgot you were in NE. Did you have a great time?

Hailey! I feel encouraged by YOUR garden! This was my fourth year here, so four years of flower beds; three of veggie raised beds. The raised beds need another truckload of raised garden bed soil, old straw, mulched leaves, but the soil in them is heavenly. Just sinks too much/breaks down a lot. Then, out in the flower beds. Amazing soil in them this 4th year. I am loving that stuff. Even in that back bed where I just spent all the time slowly and totally spading up and turning over to get all the Bermuda possible, the dirt itself is LOVELY! Love what the lasagna gardening has done to those beds!

We DID go fishing--got out at 8 this morning, and by noon, Garry had already caught 10 and I caught 5. The fish apparently preferred the front fishing line, not the back one, today. I didn't even care. It was just so beautiful to be out there. And we have nice frozen packages of fish for friends! (Eileen. . . . still wanting more? lol)

When we got home, I was bound and determined to finish the Bermuda bed. So after we got the fish taken care of, I sprayed down and got out there with my weeding buddy. By the way. . . . I was overdue for a shower later; can you imagine fish slimed all over me, and then Deep Woods Off on top of that, and filthy fish scale levis with garden filth on the knees and everywhere else.

Garry threw out the casting net probably 10 times at least and caught maybe 20 shad. But we were catching shad for a gentleman who was trying to cast from shore, too, so we needed a few more. And his 11th or 12th or 13th throw, he pulled in about a BILLION small shad. He asked me what I wanted to do--I said, "I don't CARE what you do!!!" We were both laughing SO hard! Okay, maybe not a billion. Maybe like 200. A LOT. By that time we'd already parted ways with our onshore guy.. . . . Garry was trying to empty the net into our bucket, and shad were flying every which way and there were dozens and dozens still in the net when he swooshed the net into the lake and those little guys' lives were spared.

In the meantime, I was swooping up handfuls of shad off the floor of the boat and dumping them into the bucket of water. Although I am always mindful of the fishes' lives we take, I DO love having the shad for fertilizer in the raised beds. I actually give prayers of thanks to their little souls. They were a sizeable contribution today when we got home. I bury them so wayward coons or critters don't come get them. It's amazing how just buried a few inches, they don't smell.

So the Bermuda bed IS finished. Of course I am sure I had to have missed SOME of the Bermuda. But this was the most thoroughly I've done to any of my beds. And though I thought for quite some time it couldn't be done, it was done. Tiny is BY FAR my best gardening cat! He LOVES weeding. He was the best company through this ordeal. In fact, GDW was laughing a couple days ago because I headed down to that bed, and even I heard Tiny galloping, turned; he was racing helter skelter to catch up with me. He thinks it's our special play time, and it really IS. Just a hoot.

I have no idea what got into me today. . . the energizer bunny. I was up at 6:15 (even I do not know who this person is; although Tiny was the one laying across my face that caused me to get up) and DID snooze a bit from 7:15-7:45 waiting for GDW to get up. He did, walked out with coffee and asked if we were still going fishing today. . . I said, "Well, YEAHHHH." He said, "I'll go hook up the boat we can go in 10 minutes. And we did. Then were home by 1 pm and after we got fish cleaned (BTW, electric knives only way to go) I headed out to the back yard to weed. Then I took a shower, did a big load of wash, went back out to tear out the lost cause morning glory plant and clean up the deck. Garry came out, saw me and said, "WHAT? You are really sweeping the deck??????" I laughed and told him the only real reason I was doing that was because it was another new game for Tiny. Tiny thought it was a great game, getting to chase leaves everywhere. But I did that and then put away a bunch of stuff. The deck was looking pretty trashy.

Normally if we go fishing, that's all we do in one day, but today I was just full of energy.

I have a friend in OK from another friendship group connection. She loves gardening and is finally going to have a home with a yard so she can garden. I'm so excited for her. Elizabeth. I told her to check this group out! Won't it be fun to see her here? She's not going to be as ignorant as I was, though, about gardening in the south, as she gardened in CA. (Unless, of course, she lived near SF. lol)

HJ, yep, hate losing a post too. And after one has gone to all that trouble, one just is drained. Right? AHH that reminds me. We have THE most wonderful pastor at our church. She's a spiritual pistol. I love her!! She's much younger than I am. Well the parsonage was unoccupied for 2 weeks when our last pastor left and before Gloria moved in. So the parishioners totally re-did and freshened up the parsonage. And so they (the pastor and her family) had an open house/catered supper last night in their yard at the parsonage. It is a BEAUTIFUL beautiful house! My fellow parishioners did an awesome job of painting everything, updating and so forth. I'd be happy as a claim in that house! AND a totally privacy-fenced big back yard. The fence was done by my fellow parishioners back in February. And here's the punch line, Jennifer!!!!!

Our pastor family has six chickens! In the cutest little coop ever. Obviously for our backyard supper, the chickens were enclosed. But they have a big back yard to roam in, otherwise. I asked Gloria if they were pets or just chickens. She admitted because they presently have no other pets, they're pets. But they were just supposed to be chickens. LOL Where have we heard that before?

And here I am at 9:40, still the energizer bunny. Bet I sleep well tonight. . . . . blessings to you all.

Jennifer,

I do think it is one of the mid- to late-instars (but not fully mature) of a stink bug.

The juvenile rat snake, technically, is not a bad guy as it eats rodents. Unfortunately, rat snakes also have a seemingly incurable hunger for eggs and chicks. I don't just mean tiny chicks. We had one, yes just one, adult rat snake get into the guinea coop (door was open so the adults could leave to free-range) one July afternoon and eat four half-grown guinea keats about 15 years ago. When I found him, he had wrapped his body around the 4th one and was squeezing it to death so he could eat it. Three suspicious lumps in his body told me where the other 3 guinea keats had disappeared to. Those 4 were the last guinea babies we raised at our place. The rat snake resisted my efforts to beat him with a stick to get the 4th keat free from him/her. I was stunned because the keats were so large already---not tiny chicks. So, you wouldn't mind a rat snake being around as long as you don't have poultry small enough for it to eat (or eggs......and therein lies the problem). We kill all rat snakes we find in or near our chicken coops. Otherwise, we lose all our chicks that are big enough to be out of the chick brooder and all our eggs. Needless to say, we aren't raising chickens just to feed the eggs to the rat snakes. For years Tim kept trying to capture all rat and chicken snakes, take them a few hundred yards away and release them. This kindness he showed them was fruitless and made me increasingly angry---because the snakes would slither back our our yard and poultry coops even before Tim could walk back from their release site, which meant he had accomplished nothing and hadn't solved the problem. Eventually he realized that by saving them he was further condemning our chickens and eggs to be consumed by rat snakes and chicken snakes.

The old pics are cool, and clearly you do come by chicken wrangling genetically. (grin) As one of my aunts once put it, back then, if you wanted eggs and chickens to eat you raised them yourself because no one had the cash money that local grocery stores wanted for eggs or chickens. If they did have the cash money, it was destined to be spent on things they couldn't raise or grow themselves. I remember my grandparents having chickens in the 1960s even after they moved off the ranch to a house in town---clearly their town had no anti-chicken ordinance. I don't remember them having chickens when they moved to a larger house in the same town in the early 1970s. It is likely that they decided against chickens at that point because that home didn't have a fenced yard, and it is likely roaming dogs would have killed free-ranging chickens that lacked a chicken coop and fenced-in area to protect them.

Finding photos from the past always is so fascinating. When we were helping my mom clean up a lot of the 'junk' in her house, we found a photo of my grandfather from when he was a baby---so that photo would have been from the 1890s. It was cool to see it.

Nancy, You'll always and forever be adding compost to those beds because compost breaks down to maybe 2-4% of its original volume, often just within months. I can build a compost pile with layers of chopped/shredded leaves mixed with layers of rye grass cuttings and make it 5' tall in late autumn. By Spring, that 5' tall pile is only a few inches tall and it isn't even fully-finished compost yet because it breaks down so much more slowly and incompletely in cold winter weather. If I'd leave the pile another couple of months and let it finish up in warm weather, it would be broken down to a very small pile....but I add it to the garden beds before then so that I can get on with planting. This sort of compost pile is a Catch-22. Without rye grass clippings, the leaves would decompose much more slowly, but I don't want to skip layering those with the leaves because I want the nitrogen from the green rye grass in my compost. This is why I now add hugelkultur materials to each bed and container---even half-rotted old logs take a whole lot longer to decompose than the standard compost pile and mulch materials do, so my beds and containers don't lose volume as quickly. We lose our compost and our volume of growing material mulch more quickly here than some people in cooler areas because heat eats compost, accelerating its decomposition rate. After so many years here, I now can replenish the beds just by continually mulching on top and letting it decompose, but I'd say that it takes at least 8" of mulch added to each raised bed each growing season just to keep the volume of soil from dropping so low. If I ignore a bed for a couple of years and don't keep continually replenishing it from the top down, then the volume of soil in the raised bed drops to nothing in no time at all. Every few years I use wood chips as mulch instead of grass clippings and chopped leaves because the wood mulch breaks down more slowly (not necessarily a lot more slowly, but somewhat), which helps keep the volume up in the raised beds a little bit.

I laugh at Tiny's gardening antics. All our cats were that way as kittens, but by the time they reached 3 or 4 years in age, they had discovered lots of fascinating things to do outside the garden. Pumpkin will go with me, but he won't stay long. What I'm doing is not as fun as whatever else he finds to do after he leaves the garden. Lucky still is a garden cat. She's the one who gallops past me on my way to the garden, and then she has to sit and wait for me to join her and open the gate. I think she'd be out there in the garden 24/7 if I'd let her.

Like you, I sometimes am oddly energized after a busy day and find it harder than ever to fall asleep. I think maybe once we have had our bodies in motion all day, they just need longer to unwind and fall asleep.

Halloween is about over here and it isn't even Halloween yet. We already have done all sorts of Halloween crafts and fun things with the girls and we won't see them again until after Halloween, since Chris and their mom both work on Halloween. We never get trick-or-treaters on our desolate stretch of rural roadway where houses are set back hundreds of feet from the road, so.....yesterday I undecorated the tall, thin pencil tree (it is 6' or 7' tall sitting in the corner of the mudroom, so though skinny, it is a lot to decorate), removing all the Halloween decorations and packing them away in bright orange storage tubs that tell me, quite easily, which tubs are the fall decorations. Then, I redecorated the tree specifically for Thanksgiving, mostly in shades of orange, deep red and gold. It has a lot of Indian corn on it, fake small gourds and pumpkins, autumn tinsel, glittery brown and silver acorns, gigantic green acorns, dried wheat and dried autumn flowers (looks like dried yarrow or goldenrod or something), etc. All the round glass ornaments on it are a medium orange to burnt orange in color. It looks awesome. All the lights are either clear or orange. Tim left home that morning for work, leaving a house that was decorated for Halloween and came home to one decorated for Thanksgiving. On the day after Thanksgiving, I'll remove all the Thanksgiving decorations and put up Christmas decorations. This activity on Black Friday serves as dual purpose---it changes over the house decorations to the next holiday, but it also keeps me at home and away from all the stores on Black Friday, which I think is a good thing. It likely is a good thing that the gardening season ends when it does because if I still could be spending all day every day in the garden, our home likely would have no holiday decorations.

Dawn

Loving these posts and those pics are treasures! I just love old pics of people and animals, it really is fun but a bit queer to look at them and imagine their lives and how they’re most likely gone from this earth. One of these days perhaps I’ll be the star of an old pic and people will imagine the same about me! :)

Thanks for the stink bug input. There were so many but this morning I found only two. Suffice it to say, they did not have a good morning. I’m headed off to a place in town to collect tons more leaves and I think with those, what was given me, plus the ones from my yard, I think that’ll do me till next fall. I hope so, it seems like it gets harder and a bit (just a bit) less fun every year. I plan on spreading the gifted buggy leaves in a spot in my back yard and rustling them up a bit over the next few days till they’re good and crunchy then shred them. That should encourage any bugs to leave.

Gotta Run! Good day to all!

Dawn, as I was reading your post Sunday about not many leaves yet, I was nodding in agreement with you. Well, between then and about noon today, we had leaves EVERYWHERE on the ground,. That's the fastest I've ever noticed them falling. Since we're supposed to have rain , maybe as early as this evening, and tomorrow and the next day, when I'm sure bunches more leaves will fall, I got busy and blew and mulched these, and in the front yard, too. Not many leaves in the north yard yet. f

And I got the moonflower vine out, and put the morning glory vines out of their dear-eaten misery.

Hailey, I'm so glad you're checking in again. I know that life gets busy.

Missing some of the others like Rebecca.

Good thing about my snake friend is that I drove it at least a mile away. It's an old abandoned house that I want to go through someday. There's probably tons of rats/mice for it.

Nancy, that's a lot of leaves! I've noticed that our ground is being covered right now. I want to scoop some up and put them on the compost bin right outside the door. Currently it only has kitchen scraps. I have so many different compost piles around the property.

Our Trunk or Treat is tomorrow. Who knows at this point if it will be indoors or outdoors. I have two plans. Tom is grilling hotdogs for the community. I suspect that it will be busy if it's raining because people will be looking for an indoor place. It won't be as busy if it's not raining because there will be more options because it's actually Halloween night. Indoors is sorta miserable. It's so crowded as people "trunk or treat" at classroom doors. Been there, done that. Prefer outdoors.

The chickens are finding their way out of the yard. I suspect they are going under the plastic fencing. They are getting too close to the dogs, so they will be confined until I can get some chicken wire around the bottom of the yard. Stormy and Picard are so scared. I hate this part.

I splurged with some of my time and went to Pilates tonight. I now need an Epsom salt bath.

Happy Halloween, Samhain, Day of the Dead, Dia De Muertos, All Saints Day, or whatever you celebrate. If you celebrate none of those, I hope you have a happy day just the same.

Hailey, I agree, it gets a little bit harder and a little less fun every year. Dare I even state the obvious: we are getting older every year and perhaps we tire out a bit more easily and don't enjoy the hard work quite as much as we once did. Every year I try to find ways to accomplish all the same old same old gardening chores without completely exhausting myself....so, I guess, what I'm saying is that I am trying to work smarter, not harder. I am not sure how well it is working.

Nancy, The falling leaves thing happened here today---we had wind. Real, actual wind gusting up around 30 mph and it sure brought down the leaves. Lots of them. Some of those very first trees to show autumn color now are nearly bare, but plenty of other trees that still are mostly green have most all their leaves. I enjoy watching the leaves fall, but admit that having them fall on an 82-degree day is not ideal. I was just hoping that the cats, dogs and I wouldn't find any copperheads or rattlesnakes lurking in all those leaves on the ground. I know that I did not come across any snakes though I largely tried to avoid walking through the leaves if I could, and I think all the dogs and cats seemed fine when they came indoors. I actually feel fairly relieved that the cold front is moving through here now, and the weather from this point forward should be better for falling leaves (and raking them) and not so great for snake activity. I wish it wasn't going to rain---if there's lots of leaves in the roadways, the rain will make them slick, but we just have to deal with whatever we get.

You do have a lot more leaves down than we do.

Megan, I hope all 4 surgeries go well and that the recovery is not too painful and certainly not too boring. Also, Happy 40th Birthday in advance!

All that the rest of us will be doing in November and December is talking about gardening a whole lot more than we're doing it. Other than mowing and gathering leaves with the mower, there's not a ton of stuff to be done in these two dreary, chilly months, and a lot of us get busy with family activities and the holidays. The forum slows down and gets really quiet. Oh, we might be making lists, dreaming of the 2019 garden and ordering seeds, but all that can be done from the comfort of the sofa. We talk about it a little, but we don't resume a crazy level of activity until January when we start realize onion-planting time is sneaking up on us. Well, unless we're all buried under the snow.

Keep us posted on how you're doing when you can please, because you know your gardening family will worry about you.

Nothing much happened here today. Just warm weather, wind blowing and autumn leaves falling. Today's weather would have been great for Halloween, but unfortunately Halloween will be cold and rainy.

I wasn't that worried about any possible rain that was coming our way a few days ago because the QPF had us in the 0.25" or so category of rainfall. I just looked at it again a few minutes ago because our local guy on the TV said at dinner time that we would get 1-1.25", and the QPF is more in line with what our TV met said. I tend to trust our TV met because he has a high rate of accuracy. Well, great. Because we need more mud to go with all the mud that 18" of rainfall in the last 60 days has brought us? I am so tired of mud and standing puddles of water. I would have loved enough rain to bring us mud in June, July or August, but we didn't get it. We're getting it now. (grin) Our weather's timing is off, but it is what it is.

I bought the Old Farmer's Almanac (the one with the yellow cover) for 2019 the other day, and it directly contradicts my 'spoons' forecast from the persimmon seeds. It says we'll have a warmer and drier winter. Hmmm. So, if I buy 3 other almanacs from other companies will any of them agree with this Old Farmer's Almanac or with the persimmon seed forecast or with the NOAA forecast? Will any of them agree with the squirrels who have been aggressively going after nuts for months---not even waiting for the nuts to mature, which makes no sense to me. I suppose the forecasts don't matter that much because in the end we get what we get, whether it was what was forecast or not. Oh, and it would be fair to say that we could have weather that is mostly warmer and drier, but still could have periods of heavy snow like the persimmon seeds forecast. Our weather never really is an either/or thing here is it? In OK, our weather is always a little bit of everything all thrown in together like a big, crazy salad chock full of every ingredient you can imagine.

Dawn

Megan, the very best wishes for an easy surgery and FAST recovery! And, yes, happy birthday in advance!

Hahaha, Dawn! Jacob would be proud that you bought an Old Farmer's Almanac! LOL. I got a good laugh!

Wagoner's Trunk or Treat was on this past Saturday. They did GOOD, because it is an unpleasant 52 here today and has been raining lightly since about 1.

I got started on the lasagna additions to the ex-Bermuda bed yesterday, and GDW helped. Heavy cardboard down, then the leaves I'd just double-mulched. The leaves didn't go far. . . you know how it is when you double mulch leaves! They all just disappear. Oh but I am SO excited. Remember the wood chips we got last spring? They are darn near broken down! What an amazing beautiful big pile of decomposing chips! Just lovely--like black gold! Then we ran out of cardboard having gotten less than half the bed done. This morning GDW informed me that I HADN'T run out of cardboard, that there was a bunch more, stacked up next the to welder in the shop. I was excited! So I ran in and piled it all up in my little wheelbarrow and then he helped me finish the bed, all except for the very end where I have to move some coreopsis and four o'clocks (to make sure I get the Bermuda that's hiding amongst them.) And we loaded up more decomposing wood chips everywhere. I will be mighty excited to put a ton of those in the raised veggie beds. I'm still going to go buy some raised bed soil, though. I might throw in some real dirt, too. We still have peat and of course we'll have double mulched leaves.

I spent quite a bit of time today breaking open moonflower vine pods shaking echinacea seeds around, basil.

Even though looks like it will stay cool, no freezes in sight for a while. Excellent!

Nancy, I get an almanac every year---I like the regular articles, and I like to compare our real weather to their forecasts (which are so general that they sometimes are somewhat close but not really spot on and often not even close).

Cities like yours and ours that moved their Trunk or Treat activities to last Saturday were the smart ones. Ardmore didn't move theirs---the mayor said that they wanted to have Halloween on Halloween. So, of course, today it rained out Halloween. I don't know if they tried to have Trunk or Treat there in the rain this evening or if they canceled it, but it was raining and cold so I'm guessing it was a wash-out.

We had that poor, pitiful non-stop drizzly type rain all day long. It hasn't added up to all that much---there was 0.85" in the rain gauge when I checked it around 5 pm and the rain seemed to stop shortly thereafter. Parts of our county got more. None of us needed any rain at all. I suppose there are parts of OK that didn't get the rain and are having a normal Halloween evening, but not down here in southern OK.

Our weather looks to be the same as yours---much cooler, more seasonable temperatures but no freezes or frosts in sight yet. We really didn't need to keep having highs in the 80s, so it probably is a good thing the temperatures are returning to what is more typical for November. I cannot believe we will be starting November in a few hours.

I bet the monarchs that have been lingering in the area all have flown south now. At least I hope they have, because they need to get out of here before we get too cold for them.

If all a person ever did in terms of soil improvement was just pile on mulch (especially of all types....grass clippings or straw, chopped/shredded leaves, wood chips etc.) and let it decompose in place, then soil improvement would happen like magic.....no double digging, no rototilling, etc. really necessary. Sometimes we humans make gardening a lot harder than it has to be. Nowadays I try to garden smarter, not harder, but I also don't regret the years I spent rototilling organic matter into the dense red clay to break it up and amend it because it helped a lot since we moved here during drought and remained in drought for probably 7 or 8 of our first 10 years here---at least during the growing season. When we weren't in drought, we were flooding, and that is our southern Oklahoma weather in a nut shell---flood or drought, feast or famine....very little in between. I don't think I'll ever get used to it swinging so wildly from one extreme to the other.

I'm trying to watch a Halloween movie and I'm just not that into it. I think I'll go to bed early instead.

Dawn

I might be dead.

We moved T or T indoors. It was a great success. I have a lot of experience--what to do and what not to do. But I'm tired. We have 100's from the community. It really went about as flawless as can be. I'm getting texts from people...and I don't know who they are and that's making me crazy. They are complimentary and all, but I don't know who they are. I'm going to need to turn off my phone.

the forecast for Saturday is rain. I'm sad about that because I had hoped to spend the day putting the garden to bed. Maybe it won't rain.

I'm making no sense. Wine Wednesday Time!

You're so CUTE! Love you!

Jennifer, You might not be dead. You could be undead. I hope you are still alive, and I hope you aren't a zombie.

Check your Sat forecast---for a lot of OK, the rain has rolled further out, either to Sat nite or Sunday. Maybe you'll get to put the garden to bed on Saturday after all.

It sounds like the T or T was a great success despite the weather. Congrats!

Nothing special happened here today either weatherwise or gardenwise. It was cold and windy and lots more leaves came down. I didn't do much outdoors other than feed chickens and deer and then fetch the mail from the mailbox while trying to dodge new mud and new puddles. While walking past the garden to get the mail, I tried to observe what is still in bloom: four o'clocks, a few morning glories, double purple datura, autumn sage (at least three different types---the standard one, a variety whose name I forget that has raspberry red blooms and Hot Lips), a few (very few) zinnias, cosmos, clary sage (aka mealy cup sage and Salvia farinacea), dianthus, cannas (undoubtedly their last blooms of the season), gomphrena 'Las Vegas Mix', lantanas, hummingbird vine, ornamental sweet potatoes, coleus, and Texas Hummingbird Sage. It sounds better than it looks---many leaves have either fungal or bacterial issues likely caused by the 21+" of rain that have fallen since August 1st. The flowers look great if you just ignore how awful the foliage looks this late in the season, and with the mostly abnormally cool temperatures.

We have a slender chance of patchy frost in the usual cold places according to our local TV met. Our microclimate is one of the usual cold places, so the garden flowers might not look so great tomorrow. Technically, we're only supposed to drop into the very low 40s, but some cooler microclimates could get cold enough for frost.

The deer have gotten really skittish, the Asian ladybugs no longer are trying like crazy to come indoors (very pleased about that), and our spoiled dogs and cats are very unhappy about going outdoors and having wet, cold paws. I understand how they feel.

Yesterday or this morning I saw a map showing where the new privately-owned exotic animal/wildlife park/zoo will be built near Thackerville. I confess to being unhappy about how close it will be to us, relatively speaking. If one of those tigers or other wild things were to escape, we are just a few miles upriver from that place. I hope these people know what they are doing and that they do it well because they're building in a place with very deep sandy soil and cats like to dig...... I guess I should be grateful that a few miles, by roadway, separate them from us. I cannot imagine how the people feel who are going to have exotic animals moving in next door to their property. It seems like the responsible parties bought quite a lot of property, so presumably there will be some sort of buffer zone between the captive animals and their nearest human neighbors.

Other than that, nothing is happening here.

The red oaks are looking glorious now, but that just means they're going to peak soon and then fade.

Dawn

I looked at the rain forecast this morning and it looks pretty good for most of us. By good, I mean that there shouldn't be very much rain as the QPF shows pretty small amounts for the weekend, and the rain chances are pretty low percentage-wise.

Here's the amounts for the three days running from Friday-Monday per the QPF:

QPF Rainfall Forecast for Days 1-3

While all of us gardeners do appreciate getting rain, for most parts of OK, the last 2-3 months have had too much rain at one time. On the evening news last night, they showed water coming out of the flood gates at Lake Texoma at a staggering rate per hour, considering that the flood gates have been open for what seems like weeks and weeks now and parts of the state park remain under water and inaccessible. The lake still is 8' above average, so I suppose the flood gates will be open for a while longer.

Here at our house they have lowered our chance of rain from 30% to 20% for Saturday night and then there's not another chance of rain until Monday night, so we might get through the weekend in relatively dry condition, which might allow the puddles and soupy mud from the most recent rainfall to dry up a bit.

Those of you wanting to work in the yard and garden this weekend might get your wish after all, unless you get the kind of rain that is just a light misty drizzle that falls all day long without adding up to much of anything in the rain gauge.

We're going to have the two granddaughters all weekend, starting today since there is no school today, so our plans do not include yard or garden work in the mud.

It is a dark, cold morning here, and since it is so early, our temperature could drop even lower than the current overnight low of 40, though I don't think it will since we've already gone back up to 42.

The outlook for OK for November tells us to expect weather that is cooler than average and wetter than average. Considering that is precisely what our October weather was like, this is not a big surprise.

Have a great day everyone and a great weekend too.

Dawn

The temp here is now at 40 degrees, 38 for a low last night, and a high yesterday of 52. It has been too wet to do anything. When it has been dry enough to work I have been digging a ditch around both gardens and building a parking pad for my truck. The tractor has the lawn really torn up, but if I wait till the weather is good I will have many projects that I will need to work on.

I have been going almost every day to visit mom in the nursing home in Ft. Smith. She turned 94 last month. I can tell she is depressed and thinks the end is not far away. Every day I go in she ask about Madge and Herc, and a lot of the time she ask how my garden is doing. She is not aware of the what season it is, but I guess all seasons are the same in a nursing home.

My wildlife food plot did not do well at all. There were many spots that stayed under water too long, if seemed that the turnips did better than anything else I planted. I had much better luck last year when I had to haul water to get the seed to germinate

It dried out enough here that we spent time filling up part of one of the raised beds--enough of that one that I was able to plant 6 dozen garlic. (And put more walking onions in another bed.) I decided I need about 9 dozen garlic, so quick ordered some more. That hauling soil and additives into those raised beds is HARD work. Filling up the wheelbarrows--this batch of stuff was top soil, some moldy straw, peat moss and those breaking down wood chips. I still need to get some raised bed soil, but didn't get it yesterday when I should have. And enough more leaves are falling that I mowed a bunch more of them. I expect that will be how the entire month goes, a repeat of today, whenever it's decent weather for working out there.

I went back out later to begin cutting plants back in the big center bed, but ended up just pulling lemon balm out of its new homes.

Larry, I'm so happy for your mom AND you to have this time together. I am so sad I couldn't be close to my own mom her last year.

We had .8" in our rain gauge, which is plenty. But not all that much considering it rained most of the day for 2 days in a row. About the same kind of rain you described above, Dawn. I'm hoping to get a lot more stuff into the raised beds and continue with chopping plants down tomorrow.

My hard choice for tomorrow is do I work indoors or outdoors? SO much needs to be done in both areas. Also, the Halloween décor needs to be replaced with Thanksgiving.

Hope everyone is having a good weekend so far. I'm glad to not have plans for tomorrow.

The dogs got walked tonight. As we walked past the garden, I noticed the one remaining SunGold has blossoms and small, green fruit. haha. That made my day. I'll maybe get a few more SunGolds for my salads. The other remaining tomato plants have a few green fruit, but very few. The past two years, I was able to pick a large bucket of green tomatoes before the first freeze and had fresh tomatoes well into December. Not happening this year. Disease was worse this year probably because we've been so wet. The asparagus is still green. I should finish harvesting the melons and peppers...but I might wait on the peppers until the night before the first freeze. There's enough frozen/dried/pickled peppers to last awhile.

We're going to start cooking regular meals again this week. The last month has been busy and no time for real meals. I'm looking forward to that. I've been so hungry for 2 weeks. It's like I can't get full. Very annoying.

Anyway...just checking in and reading everyone's posts. One of the cats is into something, so I'm going to check that out now. Because you need to know that. lol

Larry, We remain too muddy to do anything at all. Even walking across the lawn leaves footprints indented into the ground which then have water seep into them, forming mini-puddles. After a couple of months of record rainfall, it is starting to feel like the mud never ever will dry up again. We're hoping maybe most of the mud will dry up by Thanksgiving if we can get some more dry, sunny, windy days. On the other hand, all you have to do is check the mud to see which creatures are roaming your property, and most days I see fresh animal tracks from bunnies, white-tailed deer, coons, possums, armadillos, some sort of smallish cat---probably bobcats, as well as occasional coyotes. We have a ton of squirrels this year but they are so small and lightweight that they don't leave noticeable paw prints.

You're such a good son to your mother. I wish her peace and contentment in her final years. It is remarkable to live to be 94 years old, isn't it?

The extremes that we swing to here in this part of the country are enough to drive a person mad....too wet or too dry all the time, it seems, and rarely if ever are conditions just right.

I can see a forecast low of 37 in our forecast several days out from now. If that doesn't change, we'll likely see 33-35 degrees and probably a frost in our garden, thanks to our low-lying microclimate. I think it was in the forecast for next Thursday or thereabouts, which wouldn't be too far off from our average first freeze date---a little early, but not very much. I'm going to miss all the flowers, but I'm ready to let the garden go to sleep for the winter.

Nancy, It sounds like y'all are going to raise a huge amount of garlic.

My garden paths are walkable thanks to the heavy amount of wood mulch on them, but the soil in the garden beds is too wet for me to do anything. I do think snake season is pretty much over now that the nights are so cold, but I won't consider it truly over until we have a couple of freezing nights. I am still seeing grasshoppers and wish they'd just die already. I found a big green one of the leaf of one of the potted amaryllis plants I had out sitting in the sun on Thursday, and flicked him off of it. On Friday, I found new grasshoppers in one of the early instars---about a quarter-inch long. Oh well, every grasshopper egg that hatches now will produce a grasshopper that will freeze soon, and that's one less egg that will overwinter and give us new grasshoppers in the Spring. So, based on that reasoning, I guess every small hopper I see now is a good thing.

Jennifer, I spent the whole morning and half the afternoon cleaning house yesterday before the granddaughters arrived yesterday, and was so pleased with the shining, gleaming clean of it all. Of course, all it takes is one trip outdoors and in again by the three dogs and the floor quickly loses its just-mopped glow. It only takes a minute to Swiffer up the new pawprints, but I'm going to wear out this Swiffer pretty quickly at this rate. lol. There are days I wish the dog yard was concrete. Well, not really, because it wouldn't be comfortable for them, but I get so tired of muddy paw prints. The dogs and cats are completely over having all the mud and puddles and just prefer to stay indoors as much as they can. We all need some dry weather....and if we ever get it, then I'll spend a day in the garden. I hope you have a productive and fulfilling day today whether you chose to spend it indoors or outdoors. Now that leaves are falling in the dog yard, that helps put another layer, albeit a thin one, of something between the mud and the dogs' paws.

I thought I already had switched out all the Halloween decor for Thanksgiving decor, but realized yesterday that I still have the Halloween welcome mat out by the back door, so I need to replace it with something else today. That's a minor thing in the overall scheme of things. Oh, and all the girls' Halloween artwork still is up on the fridge. Maybe this afternoon or evening we can create some Thanksgiving artwork to replace it. We have a really busy day planned, so they might be too worn out to be creative late in the day though.

The annual periwinkles (these are pink with a white eye) that I have in six large containers near the back door are starting to decline as the nighttime lows dip into the 40s. I really need to replace them, and now that the weather is finally cooling down, it probably is a good time to do so at last.

It is supposed to be a pretty windy day today. I'm grateful that we haven't had a frost or freeze yet because that means a lot of the vegetation in the pastures still has some green in it. Were that not the case, I'd be worried about grass fires/wild fires with the sort of wind expected today. We are rapidly approaching a worst possible case scenario, with tons of new growth that soon will freeze and either die or go dormant, fields so wet that fire brush trucks would immediately bog down and get stuck, and a lot of wind. This reminds me of 2005-06, and not in a good way. We need for the rain to stop for a while so the ground can dry up again.

After hoping throughout the summer drought for rain, it seems ludicrous to now be hoping for it to stop, but we've had at least 6 months worth of rain in the last 2 months and enough is enough already. My poor compost pile just looks like a pot of soup....I don't know when it ever will dry up again. I keep adding cardboard to it, hoping the cardboard will soak up all the excess moisture.

Dawn

Dawn. . . . . laughing so hard. Isn't gardening insane! Yep, I hear ya, hoping for the rain to stop. Actually, our rain up here has been very reasonable--which only adds more craziness to this conversation thread. Whoops. Spoke too soon--sounds like a flooding rain out there!? You guys never told me I'd have plenty of rain in the fall.

I'm guessing that's because you don't KNOW that.

I am leaving for Wyoming on Tuesday, Nov. 6. I'm going to make it a short trip. I hopefully will be back on Nov. 13. I have many dear and precious friends there, but we gotta consolidate the get-togethers. PLUS! One of the best restaurants I've ever eaten at, including 5 stars in CO, MN, NY, PA, SF--is right there in Buffalo, Wyoming. Google the menu on Winchesters Buffalo WY. . . The meals there which may appear to be expensive, are black gold meals that would cost $100 in Mpls or Tulsa or NYC.

I am not really worried about driving up to Wy alone, but am prayerful about it. And for those of you who believe in God, please throw in a prayer for my safe travels.

Nancy, I am not sure if gardening is insane or if it is we gardeners who are insane. I try not to think too deeply about this topic. I always say that you don't have to be crazy to garden in Oklahoma, but it helps if you are.

I was starting to think maybe y'all were staying too dry up there and that we were hogging all the rain, so I'm glad some rain came your way.

Normally (who am I kidding---it is almost impossible to say what passes for normal weather in OK), our driest months are December, January and February.

I will be praying that you have a safe trip to Buffalo and back. I hope you're ahead of the snowfall and don't encounter bad road conditions. Enjoy your wonderful meal at Winchesters, and I truly hope that laying your mother to rest is a peaceful experience for you.

It was a grandchildren day, spent at the mall and at the movies down in the DFW metro while Tim slipped away from us for about 4 hours to participate in DFW Airport's annual Lifesaver Drill (a fake disaster using volunteers to play the crash victims). Sadly he missed seeing the movie, Goosebumps 2, with us so he didn't get to see all the Halloween creatures (including gummy bears) come to life and behave badly, but we spent the rest of the day with him after that. I have such a low tolerance for huge mobs of people at big malls that I felt like we couldn't get out of there quickly enough after the movie was over. (grin) Y'all know I'm happier at home with my chickens, dogs and cats as well as the garden, yard, pastures and mud than at a big shopping mall where civilized people are shopping for shoes that (based on what I saw in store windows), I'd find impractical and useless.

It was horribly windy and the sun gave way to clouds pretty early in the day. When we got home in late afternoon, the clouds soon brought a little line of rainstorms a bit after dark. The thunderstorm here was strong enough to temporarily knock out the satellite TV, but it didn't last long so I'm hoping I won't find much rain in the rain gauge (or on the ground) when I go outdoors after daybreak this morning.

Driving back home from Texas, I was looking out across the rural fields where the only green you see is in fertilized fields of winter crops/grasses like rye, wheat or whatever and was noticing how most of the fields are the color of mixed dormant grasses....what I call winter colors. I don't care for winter colors. I love spring and summer greens.....so I whined to Tim that with the low dark clouds and winter grass colors, it looked like winter already. He sighed. He knows how miserable I am when the green season has ended and the brown winter season has arrived. Technically we aren't even at that point yet, and there's still some bits of green in the pastures, but overall it really is starting to look winterish. The wind really brought down tons more leaves too.

It is so odd. Where Tim's sisters live in PA, the autumn remained as abnormally warm as their summer weather had been, so their trees are just now starting to lose their leaves too. It is rare that our trees and their trees are on the same schedule. I remember the very first year I went up there to PA at Thanksgiving, the trees were bare and there was snow on the ground, so their autumn up there this year sounds very different from the weather up there back in the early 1980s.

I enjoy the cooler weather, but wish it could be both lushly green and cool/cold at the same time. I didn't overseed the bermuda grass with rye grass and am sort of wishing I had---at least we'd have a sea of green around the house. On the other hand, having to mow it twice a week in winter gets old too, plus I was concerned about the constant heavy rainfall making it impossible for the seeds to sprout and grow this fall. Probably the seeds all would have washed downhill into the woods. Sometimes with our weather you can't win for losing.

Dawn

I’m still here. Lots of work, self care, and resting my back. Got the first seed catalog of the year today. Botanical Interests. Making my final choices for the election tomorrow. I think I need crib notes. Go vote everyone!