We both managed to catch one of the lovely respiratory cruds going around, so I lost some time to that over the last couple of weekends. I did manage to dig out the first batch of dahlias ahead of a big rainstorm during the week (see above), and those were cleaned off and packed up today.
Unfortunately, the Noordwijks Glorie had sprouted up in the meantime in a way that looked a lot like gall. I decided not to take any chances with that, and it’s gone. I’ll be getting rid of the soil from the pot it was in as well. (Thank goodness I kept to the pots this year.)
We had a second frost last night, so the rest of the dahlias are now done. I’ve got them curing a bit before I package those up.
Since I finally felt up to it today, I did a fair amount of clean up work. The greenhouse is down, as well as the rain barrel. The hose has been put away – I grabbed an insulated spigot cover for that this year. I’ve left a little bit of blocks around the kale. Something has been chewing on the Swiss chard, so I’m trying to guide them to the broccoli and romesco in back first, but ultimately, if the kale goes, I’ll live.
It’s just about noon in the picture above, so you can tell how much the sun angles have changed. (Clocks turned back last night – boo!) I do still have the perennial pots out. They can go in once it’s actually supposed to snow.
The front bed is cleaned up and mulched. We’d bought this mulch in the summer and never gotten it out. I was going to save it until next year, but something was getting into it in the garage. Probably not a bad thing, as the storm we got earlier this week blew away most of the leaves from our yard, so I probably won’t be able to scrunge up enough to do my traditional leaf mulch over this bed.