My brother and sister were kind enough to help out in the garden last weekend. We pruned some roses, trimmed back the dame’s rockets, raked, shredded and mulched with some leaves, and mowed the lawn!

I had spent time loading all the pots into the greenhouse the day before which worked out perfectly since we had two nights below freezing last week. The greenhouse is stuffed really full. I’ve committed to organizing it better next year so there is more room for clivias under the shelving, which will leave a lot more room for a path in the cold months and a functioning workstation for potting and checking things out.

Today, I cleaned the orchard garden up a bit, pruning back some roses and berry canes. I noticed that the old camellia shrub along the fenceline has tripled in size in the last few years and is stretching out into the main garden and towards the street, as well. My Felco pruners clipped back a bunch of it but there is a LOT more to prune to get it back to a comfortable size. I’ll tackle some more of it tomorrow.

My other project today was to clean up the potting bench area. I emptied a bunch of pots with soil left after the resident plants had moved on to their next lives. Then I took the time to organize all the empty pots, stacking them by size. For the clay pots, I put some soil in them in preparation for the bulb delivery slated for Monday or Tuesday next week. There are a few more things I can do to straighten up the area, but it already looks better than it has for years! More work tomorrow will include sawing down the bitter cherry suckers that have sprung up all over the yard.

Lastly, I wandered around the yard to see what dared to be blooming in early November. The witch hazel that I have near the street in front of the orchard bed is in full bloom. This is the shrub that grew up from below the graft of the cultivar I had originally purchased. IT so graceful and actually very beautiful when it is in bloom, so I’m glad I’ve never cut it back.

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There were a few items blooming that I didn’t get decent photos of: two kinds of salvia are blooming in the memory garden, along with a few of the catmints. The asters just a very few flowers left on them, but they have some great seed heads that I hope the birds take advantage of.