November Gardening Days (taking advantage of good weather)
At this time of the year the weather seems to fluctuate rather dramatically. We can easily experience a chain of lovely, sunny days with mild temperatures one week, followed by a drastic and extreme drop in temperature the next, with harsh and steady rain threatening to flood the landscape. The evening temperatures are what usually prove to be the most chilling, with some nights seeing the mercury drop low enough to even provide frost or ice. The frost that we experienced last weekend was what finally did most of the garden in - forcing some still very exuberant plants into an early hibernation, and completely flattening others - browning everything it touched - crisping up the tips of the already curling leaves. But this is November, and that is what is to be expected from a very unpredictable month.
The front garden projects continue on into November
And what this means to a gardener is simply that we cannot count on too many more great gardening days at this time of the year, so when we do have one, then we should take full advantage of the nice weather and get outside and garden. One bright, warm day may fool us temporarily, but the frost on the pumpkins that arrives just hours later will surely take away any daydream of prolonged or continued garden work. The lesson of these days, and of this particular time of the year, is to take full advantage of the good days that we are given and to get moving and planning and taking care of our gardens. On the more inhospitable of days, when it is just too cold or damp to comfortably be outside, we must roll with the punches and work on other tasks indoors - perhaps sketching out future plans or garden ideas, or taking care of our indoor plants (more to come about that in a future blog).
The project that I began earlier this autumn in the front garden is a very good task to keep revisiting at this time of the year. Moving flower beds, rearranging borders and adding completely new pathways was rather a large project to begin at summers end, but nonetheless it was something that I willingly did take on, and so now must continue - and happily so! Having at first thought that perhaps the calendar may have outsmarted me, I gave in just slightly - doing only what I knew that I could get done - figuring that I would have to finish the project in the spring. But we have had enough very pleasant weather this fall that I have actually been able to continue and to make some further adjustments; the weather has been on my side, allowing me the ability ‘to garden’ well into November.
Yes, the project will indeed have to wait until spring to be fully finished (and which garden project is actually ever fully finished to begin with?), but I definitely have been taking advantage of some good, fall gardening weather and making headway. I fixed the shape and direction of a few of the pathways, transplanted several more plants, and finally got planted a few of the ‘stragglers’ that had just been hanging around the potting bench, still in their nursery containers and looking sad. I was also able to add more gravel to some of the new paths that I had thought may remain nothing but ‘dirt paths’ until spring. All very good gardening accomplishments, as far as I am concerned.
The finishing touch (at least for now) in the front garden was the addition of four new boxwood plants. I had to slightly move one of our birdbaths - which now sits in the middle of the front garden and has become a focal point - and when I moved it, the annuals that had been surrounding the base were sent to the compost pile, creating a large, empty patch of dirt at the base of the birdbath. And as beautiful as the birdbath is, it just seemed lost; it was crying out for something to ‘anchor’ it to the garden itself. I was able to find four ‘Petite Pillar’ boxwoods at my local garden center and they proved to be the perfect addition - surrounding and anchoring the pedestal of the birdbath to the ground, to the garden, and to the new pathways themselves.
The frost did indeed arrive this month, taking away most of the garden - certainly the last of the flowers. At this point I have one small phlox that is somehow still in flower, but that is all. And of course, only a few days after the temperatures dipped into the 20’s, they immediately rose back up into the 60’s and everything felt oddly like spring. Strange and fluctuating weather seems to be the new normal these days and something that we will all have to be getting used to as our climate changes. Again, another reason to take full advantage of the warmer days when they show themselves. Until the truly cold weather arrives, freezing the ground and making any real gardening work impossible, there is still time to fiddle away - fixing this and rearranging that - trying our very best to outsmart Mother Nature and to squeeze in the very last of our gardening chores this season before she decidedly says ‘no more’.
Until next time…
