To be honest these photos are about a week old, and when I say “about” you could probably add another week on to that if you’re really dotting all your i’s and crossing your t’s but… *edit* Okay so still trying to be honest (which becomes rarer each day that AI creeps further and further into our lives) just editing a few pictures and writing one sentence appears to add another week onto the timeline, so now rather than an update on the autumn garden this is probably closer to a retrospective.  Let’s call it a retrospective on fall and hope the next post doesn’t become a retrospective on winter.

The autumn porch decorations.  A little more than usual this year with three purchased mums and a couple pumpkins and squash to boost the home-grown display.

As usual no excuses for the delays.  The only one I can really put a finger on is the morning when a child asked if anyone was coming with her to a college visit she had set up.  Oh really?  As the parent who drew the short straw I had fifteen minutes to prepare for a day on campus rather than a day bringing in houseplants and that’s probably sounding worse than it really was since much of my life involves fifteen minutes to prepare for something I either put off too long or forgot about, but it’s an excuse for one of the days at least.

With the return of rainfall the potager is at least green even if it’s not lush and productive.  Perhaps it’s time for some potager-love, and next year this area will hopefully get some well deserved attention to weeding, watering, and planting.

Maybe it’s time for a what-you-did last summer retrospective since a true update might need to go back that far.  Going all the way back to June the summer was off to a ‘let me just quickly build a shade structure for the deck it will only take a weekend’ start, and news flash *it did not take only a weekend* but it did start off a tropical revival on the deck.  Some corner braces for a 4×4 frame with a shade cloth hung between them and voila!  an excuse to spend the next two weeks re-painting porch furniture, repotting tropicals for the planters, dragging tables and furniture and a tv out to the covered porch, mosquito netting… way too much, but it was all because I saw the corner braces online and between that and two $15 palms which were too amazing to leave at the store things escalated.

The deck was more foliage than flowers this year and now I’m faced with how to overwinter a pair of palms which were probably cheap enough to leave outside, but I could never do that.

So the deck was an innocent start but then as you may recall there was the bulldozing of the daylily farm which happened as June rolled into July.  Things were set into motion.  Rather than replant a few daylilies, three unearthed stones became a rock garden and you know about that, but the rock garden needed a coating of sand and of course I got too much because sand is always useful around here.  Some of the extra sand was used to level out an area where the kid’s old playhouse, aka ‘spider house’, could be placed.  We have no use for a kid’s playhouse currently yet no one to give it to but what if it was repainted and accessorized?  Enter a rebranding of spider house to ‘Begonia House’ since perhaps this area provides just the right filtered shade which the begonias seem to enjoy, and “I think pink would be nice for my house” became the color theme.  A green roof?  We shall try.  The results straddle the line between garish, spray-painted plastic garden trash and elite garden whimsy but I like to pretend that it’s whimsy.  Several great gardening estates have whimsical garden playhouses for children so there you are.  Whimsy in the garden, except my visitors like to over-pronounce the ‘Wh’ as in Cool Whip and I guess referring to it as whhhhhimmmmsy is as classy as we will ever get.

Begonia House’s first year in the Northern corner of the estate.  I’m sure the nearby coldframe and leftover lumber pile only add to the ambiance, but the begonias appreciate the new setting.  I was able to easily gather multiple large overwintered begonias from around the estate but I’m sure that’s not a problem.

So with some of the sand taken care of it was time to address another bit of daylily farm repercussions.  When it happened I lost a lot of plants.  I was angry.  No I didn’t want the town to replace them but here’s a deal which I could get behind.  I have concrete blocks as steps going up the berm which separates us from the industrial park.  They’re kind of ugly but they save me from many a twisted ankle and tumble down the bank as I weed wack or do other maintenance.  If you can get me stone steps to go up the berm I will stop complaining about the lost daylily farm and even worse, the snowdrops which were destroyed.  So there I was for another couple weeks manhandling 300 pound stone treads into the yard and up the slope and then why not add a bunch more stones to the berm and then mulch it all.  Extra stones?  How about some more square stacks of rocks at the base to put potted succulents on.

I think it looks better.  Eventually new plantings should tie the steps into the berm a little better but for now I’m waiting to see all the weeds which return before I go putting too many things in there.

Seems like we’re covering a lot of ground here and I guess we are but remember this is the whole summer we’re looking at so don’t be too impressed.  Plenty of time was spent sitting around and doing nothing which is more par for the course, but one more thing before I get back to that.  A course of concrete blocks was pulled off the berm steps in order to put in the stone steps so why not make a little sitting area in the ‘waste area’ with the extra blocks.  It looks raised but that’s only because the fill here has settled and the area needs just a little more soil to level it up before I’ll be happy with it, so I tried to look ahead a little and prep for that.  I’m probably sharing more than you care to hear but the blocks just add on to the leftover soil and mulch from the daylily farm re-do which also ended up in the ‘waste area’.  Actually the ‘waste area’ isn’t really much of a thing any more but I’m not ready to post the pictures which prove it so you’ll just have to trust me that daylilies are being rowed out and hopefully it will look nice by next summer…

It doesn’t look like much but the last of the sand was just enough to bring the blocks up to a level which I like.  A few more blocks cut in half to square off the patio, some more dirt to level the lawn, dirt to create beds on the sides, mulch, plants…. ok it’s a start at least.

Now it’s autumn though.  We had a touch of frost a few days ago and that was just what this gardener needed to remind him that a bunch of stuff needs to come inside and under shelter before the cold becomes more serious.  He tried for one night to claim he didn’t care and maybe a serious frost could save him from a bunch of work, but that proved to be false and now we’re at the two hundred pots and counting phase of winter protection.  It sounds excessive but most of them are tiny little things which shouldn’t even count but for dramatic effect they were counted and it’s really the one or two or ten bigger things which should come with a warning label.  I can’t even speak coherently when I talk about the two most exciting bigger things which I had to go back for since there wasn’t enough room in the car when I first saw them.  The might be Kentia palms and they’re too big for my house but I don’t care and have them now anyway.

I love my new palms and they’re totally unreasonable and unnecessary but for $7 each they had to come home with me.  I will rearrange my life to make them happy.

As you can see all my projects and decisions are entirely reasonable and well thought out.  I hope you’re having the same luck and not wondering how three potted ferns turned into seven even though you gave a couple away in spite of the fear that you might “need” them all after all.  I did give a few away and we should highlight these successes as progress and be glad over it rather than worry about some weird fern obsession developing.  Actually the speed at which the gardener killed a new maidenhair fern probably did more to nip this possible obsession in the frond than any call for self-control could, but again let me claim it as a success.  January is when we splurge on houseplants and I shall wait for that.

Enjoy your autumn!  I am days away from the first snowdrop in bloom and any plants not under protection by then might have to fend for themselves since reasonable decisions become even more unlikely once snowdrop season starts.  Today I can still search for a windowsill for the new lemon, next week I will probably just lose myself to complaining about needing MORE fall blooming snowdrops 😉