The Return of the Friday Chore Day

I'm not complaining about hot, humid weather now, am I?  Glorious crisp, cool autumn weather is upon us, and I'm trying to knock out as many chores as I can before snow flies.  Thank goodness for my every other Friday off!

I haven't worked on the alpine garden because I really wanted to get the manure pile moved before winter.  You can see how much the pile had grown over the last year - in the background to the right of the barn.  That's just a fraction of it.

I picked away at the pile a few weeks ago and moved it over to where the forest garden will be.  Today I snipped some wayward saplings and then spent two and a half hours bucketing manure across the yard.  That old tractor of mine sure does a number on a body!  I feel like I've been beaten half to death, but the pile is moved.  What little I couldn't manage to scrape up I hand raked and spread it around.  It will compost nicely over the winter and add to the soil back there.  

 

The stall mats are out because the rat plague has reached a zenith of infuriating activity.  From what I understand, they are awful everywhere this year.  I don't really feed grain to the mules, so I'm not sure what they're after, but they break through every barrier I put up.  I'll be working on a solution to that - they're too smart to get trapped, but I've found a second one dead in the water bucket.  A sinister plan is hatching!

Meanwhile, on the other side of the driveway...

 Manure has been dumped, then hand raked to get the worst of the lumps out.  The tractor can't get any further up the bank than what's there now, it's steeper than it looks.  Once we have snow I'll haul my daily manure up to the wall area via my manure sled and dump it.  I still have to cut some more saplings and brush toward the end of the driveway area, but that will open up easily accessible areas to dump the manure from now until snow flies.  I still have some 50/50 mix that I'll start spreading over the manure, and next year hopefully I can add either some more of that or topsoil.  I should be able to start planting in here next summer, so long as we get a good winter to rot that manure down.  I'm excited to create this garden, especially in among the mossy rocks and tree roots.  I love the ferns that are already there, and will be adding more.

Between this project and the backyard gardens, I have enough going on to keep me busy for the next few years.  Boy, those garden centers love to see me coming!

 

The Time In Which I Enter My Puttering Phase

It's hot again, but in the next few days temperatures will plummet and we're expecting our first frost.  I've now entered my Puttering Phase.  This is when it doesn't look like like much, but I'm getting a lot done.  

I've split and transplanted all of the tall asters, planting them throughout the meadow area to promote late season color next year.  In their place I've planted Russian sage along the patio's granite face, and perennial sweet pea vine at the base of each side of the arbor.

 

I've also finally planted the Savannah Sunset Ninebark bush I purchased back in the spring.  I feel like having it on the end of the patio opposite of the Yellow Twig Dogwood balances the area.

I planted the New York Ironweed and an Alma Potschke aster near the little water feature, and gave the curly willow a drastic pruning.

The last time I pruned her, I stuck the branches in the big planter out front and managed to get a few of them to root.  I have given away those offspring, and figured I'd try it again.  

I'm really starting to see the future of the backyard space, and can see the layout a little better.  It's beginning to transform into what's been in my head and look less like random areas.  The ultimate goal is to connect each space to make it a whole, continuous garden.

I planted a bunch of allium bulbs in the cottage gardens yesterday and watered them in this morning.  I was shocked to find the deer had gone through the cottage garden and jumped the fence, then laid waste to my green bean plants in the hillside garden! 

Those plants were covered with leaves and had at least enough beans for one last meal on them.  The beans weren't the only victims - they nibbled on my Pagoda Dogwood tree, ate all the little heads of broccoli, and even sampled some of the Pale Purple and Bush's Coneflowers that I had in the cement block bed.  They've never jumped the fence before, I can't believe it.

Speaking of the hillside garden, I've managed to empty two more beds of perennials.  I don't think I'll be doing much more transplanting after this week, but hopefully it will spur me on to empty the rest so that I have more room for vegetables next year.  I want to move the Montauk Daisy out and transplant her somewhere else - that takes up an entire bed itself!  I've never had real success with this plant.  It's a late season bloomer and can be beautiful, but it really has never been happy enough to bloom proficiently.  It's a great space eating plant, though, so it may go somewhere where more interest is needed.  Because it's a fall bloomer, she won't be transplanted until spring.

 The other beds have mostly iris and one lavender plant, all of which I plan to move to the alpine garden in the spring.

And as much as I curse them, I have to admit the Jerusalem Artichoke has some spectacular flowers. 

I didn't plant any of those on purpose; they hitched a ride in the roots of my daylily plants when I moved, and I'm still trying to peel them out!  The ones in the hillside garden are the result of me tossing tubers out of the cement block bed when I dig them up.   

I still have plenty of puttering to do before snow flies and the ground freezes, but for now I'll enjoy the limited daylight and relative warmth while I can.

Some late season colors from around the gardens that I'm enjoying while puttering - the cosmos have really produced despite the lack of water:

And as I finish this post the next morning, these jerks have once again breached the hillside garden walls and laid waste to everything they hadn't touched the night before.  

 So much for my brussel sprouts.  I love the wildlife, I say through gritted teeth.