Snail mail lilies

An unexpected lovely Fall day. With MyFolia weather indicating a possible frost tonight I decided to move some of my container plants into the basement. First I needed to start clearing up my porch which acts as a garden shed during the summer – piles of pots, various fertilizers (organic of course), small garden tools, a sack of winter wrappings, etc. etc. When I went to the basement where these are stored during the winter, I found to my delight that someone had cleared the space where I usually put tender plants to die back and overwinter. The Agapanthus (which didn’t bloom at all), Canna and Crinum are all down there with some of the cleaned pots and planters, and the dismantled greenhouse and fertilizers have gone to their shelf. At least a start made to the clearing the porch.

The potted clematis has been put into a sack of leaves and moved against the corner of porch and wall, and I started raking the maple leaves, filled a big sack, insulation for some plant. DPWR’s pots of excess plants from my garden got moved to the porch, she will be here next weekend. There are even a couple of strawberries on her plants. I usually still find one or two sweet alpine strawberries on the plants that I divided up and spread out, they all look happy. Only the planters with chard, with the pink pelargonium and the two with the begonias are still out.

Trimming off dead leaves and generally clearing up, a stick stuck in the earth reminded me about the lilies in the mail. They had at last arrived, over 8 working days doesn’t raise one’s confidence in ‘expedited post’ but they did get a hurricane in the Maritimes so I guess that is an excuse. The hemerocallis didn’t look as though they had suffered and got put straight into the ground. This time the box and packings did not smell strongly of chemicals. There is one lily left to arrive, the replacement for the purple Turk’s Cap lily.

Photos: Berberis ‘Rose Glow’; Berberis ‘Aurea Nana’; Berberis ‘Concorde’ against Pussytoes and Summer Aster leaves; berries on ‘Rose Glow’; Golden Rod which must be about 7’ high

A lovely skyscape, maceral cloud, wisps of mare’s tails, lenticular clouds and looming in the west, grey rain clouds. The peaks have a dusting of snow and given the forecast temperatures it will probably stay now. Very heavy rain showers at the weekend and brisk winds have brought down a lot of leaves. I watered the two shrubs in the rain shadow of the spruce, as I have been everytime it rained for the last month or so; the Hydrangea ’Brussel’s Lace’ is loosing its leaves, but the Forsythia ‘Fiesta’ is still its pretty variagated self, although I was quite surprised how easily a twig broke when I knocked it with the watering can. I have been watering them because it is totally dry under the spruce and although they are not growing they should not dry out. Once the weather gets cold I won’t water them.