full on morning ramble zone...
ok, all garlic taken apart, garlic planted. the first package of garlic sent out to a business nearby which is growing local discoveries. i told them at the past seed swap that i would send them enough to help them get this garlic established. it is well worth the effort and i wish them well with it and it will be interesting to see how it goes through the years. they have about a pound and a half of nice sized (thumb sized cloves) seed garlic to plant and then i also gave them a lot of smaller bulbs that i weeded out of another garden to give them more to work with for future crops along with some scapes from this season to give them even more. even if they don't choose to plant it all it solved a normal problem for me which is having a lot of garlic that i sometimes do use in the middle of winter but if i know someone wants it i'd rather give it away for planting. saved me a few hours of future effort.
with those done i can move on down the list of requests now that it is cooler enough to not worry about packages frying as they are shipped.
the weather is looking to be reasonable the next three days and that works out well for getting gardens finished up and put away for the winter inside the fence. i have around 16 gardens inside the fence of which a few are perennial gardens so those don't need much done now other than some weeding here or there to get ready for winter.
Mom has already helped some in getting gardens weeded and piles of things gathered together so that all i have to do is dig enough of a trench to bury them and those will be done. i have a few gardens yet to check completely for beans i'd want to keep if they are in good enough condition. so if i bury a few gardens each day and also check one garden then i can get six to nine more gardens done. i've already done most of two of the largest areas completely and also finished up a project that has been waiting for years so that is a nice and unexpected bonus for the coming year, and having the garlic planted solved that problem too. it is nice when plans can work out that ways.
the onion patch, cucumber patch and one of the tomato gardens are already done. i will do the other tomato garden today
i have a large garden (usually i grow beans there) that will get torn up a bit and that is mostly ready to go as soon as i can get back to that project. it has drain tubes in it i need for that other ditch/pallet removal project and also a lot of tulips in there that would be nice to move. the neighboring lily garden did get some daffodils taken out of it and a top layer of wood chips put over it this season - moving those daffodils was a project i wanted to do for about seven years. felt good to get that done.
there are also some pathways i'm removing from around another garden, but i'm not too likely to get into that until next year (if i can get them done they would save hours of weeding time as each pathway now has enough dirt in the gravel that they grow a lot of weeds) - unless the weather is very forgiving for another month. sometimes we do get a nice late fall where i can get a lot done and other times where winter sets right in. we'll see... the frequent rains of this fall have so far set me back by several weeks from "normal" (whatever that is
)...
i never have a problem finding things to do. if my body could handle it i'd be outside from dawn to dusk but i have to be careful and work as i can and take breaks to get things done here. i'm glad that Mom doesn't complain too much about how it goes (but she was getting on the north garden because it looked pretty bad for several years - i got major bonus points for finishing that up at last and keeping it up as i have since then) - she understands. back injuries from teen years and other things haven't left me with 100% capacity. more like 50% so i try to make that 50% go as far as i can along with working smarter and trying to simplify so it isn't so hard to keep up around here. little by little progress is being made.
i'm always excited too for the coming spring and the flowers. with everything we moved and replanted it will be interesting to see what i've missed along with how the gardens will look - thousands of daffodils were moved. i really need to thin out some of them to give the less common ones more room. i haven't taken inventory of how many we have in years (20-30 types i think). i wonder how many are lost and which ones we've gained...
same with the tulips. i used to have about 90 different kinds of tulips, but diseases/predators and less than optimal conditions in the largest tulip patch have thinned them out. the whole front border that i'd planted with daffodils and tulips alternating for over 160ft has mostly been reduced to just daffodils because the deer and rabbits feasted on the tulips. had some really pretty ones in there...
i'm glad i got pictures when i did. the daffodils in there all need to be thinned out they've gotten so thick now. they do keep flowering though so it isn't a priority. Mom has been filling in any empty spots with all the daffodils i've been moving.
still haven't gotten a new camera.
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