No talk, just pictures!
Beautiful, no?
October 6, 2012
December 12, 2011
Geese
Christmas is coming, the geese are getting fat,
Please to put a penny in an old man’s hat;
If you haven’t got a penny, a ha’penny will do,
If you haven’t got a ha’penny, God bless you.
(English nursery rhyme, set to music in the late 1800’s and often sung as a round, appeared in The Real Mother Goose book in 1916)
The geese flying overhead are very noisy these days. It is seen as a sign of the season, but I wondered why, instead of flying south, they were all flying north! Perhaps they were all meeting up on the banks of Lake Ontario before deciding where to winter.
According to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology here, there is plenty of grain left in the open corn fields and usually open waters in the lakes and ponds to allow them to stick around in some places in the winter. Our town lies along one of the traditional migration routes, but the numbers of geese around here in the winter definitely seem to be growing. The ponding areas around the malls are full of them all year-round.
Cornell also says, “Migrating flocks generally include loose aggregations of family groups and individuals, in both spring and fall. Flights usually begin at dusk, but may begin anytime of day, and birds fly both night and day. They move in a V formation, with experienced individuals taking turns leading the flock.”
So, long story short, I don’t know why there were so many geese flying north for several days. Perhaps our winter will be milder than usual!
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Frost on the punkin
Frosty mornings are the norm now, but little snow yet. I’m sure that will be remedied soon as it is almost the middle of December already. I ventured out a few mornings ago to take some pictures for you to enjoy.
Chamaecyparis 'Golden Mops'
“When the Frost is on the Punkin”
by James Whitcomb Riley
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock,
And you hear the kyouck and gobble of the struttin’ turkey-cock,
And the clackin’ of the guineys, and the cluckin’ of the hens,
And the rooster’s hallylooyer as he tiptoes on the fence;
O, it’s then the time a feller is a-feelin’ at his best,
With the risin’ sun to greet him from a night of peaceful rest,
As he leaves the house, bareheaded, and goes out to feed the stock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.
Frozen crabapples
They’s something kindo’ harty-like about the atmusfere
When the heat of summer’s over and the coolin’ fall is here—
Of course we miss the flowers, and the blossoms on the trees,
And the mumble of the hummin’-birds and buzzin’ of the bees;
But the air’s so appetizin’; and the landscape through the haze
Of a crisp and sunny morning of the airly autumn days
Is a pictur’ that no painter has the colorin’ to mock—
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.
Hakonechloa 'Aureo-marginata'
The husky, rusty russel of the tossels of the corn,
And the raspin’ of the tangled leaves as golden as the morn;
The stubble in the furries—kindo’ lonesome-like, but still
A-preachin’ sermuns to us of the barns they growed to fill;
The strawstack in the medder, and the reaper in the shed;
The hosses in theyr stalls below—the clover overhead!—
O, it sets my hart a-clickin’ like the tickin’ of a clock,
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.
Pennisetum alopecuroides 'Hameln'
Then your apples all is gethered, and the ones a feller keeps
Is poured around the cellar-floor in red and yaller heaps;
And your cider-makin’s over, and your wimmern-folks is through
With theyr mince and apple-butter, and theyr souse and sausage too!…
I don’t know how to tell it—but ef such a thing could be
As the angels wantin’ boardin’, and they’d call around on me—
I’d want to ‘commodate ’em—all the whole-indurin’ flock—
When the frost is on the punkin and the fodder’s in the shock.
Sedum 'Autumn Joy'
And a final image for you to enjoy while waiting for the snow to fall.
Microbiota decussata
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November 13, 2011
Drive-by mulching
We’re finally getting our gardens under control for the winter and today was a good day for our usual drive-by mulching routine. Most of the leaves are down on the trees in our yard with only a few left on our neighbor’s silver maple. Instead of all the effort to rake those leaves up to the road for the town to compost, we have found that our lawn mower does a great job of chopping them up into itty-bitty pieces for our own compost. After dealing with most of the leaves under the trees and mulching them into the lawn, we rake some into the surrounding gardens. Then, after cutting down the tallest or otherwise taking care of some of the more delicate plants by manual pruning, we run the mower over the remaining debris and leaves, AKA drive-by mulching. Voilà! nearly instant compost material for the gardens and clean-up for the winter.
Update: A post and subsequent comments over at The Garden Professors talk about mulching and using leaves as lawn fertilizer here.
In the meantime, take a look at a few of the goodies we still have left in the gardens.
Carex 'Toffee Twist'
Crabapples
Even the forsythia has great fall color!
Miscanthus 'Gracillimus' against the blue fall sky
Still have lettuce coming on
Love the seed heads for the ligularia!
Stunning red leaves on the oakleaf hydrangea
What other colorful things do you have showing their stuff now? Are your gardens ready for the winter to come?
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