The Monday Record was intended to show what I had accomplished in the preceeding week, possibly including Monday itself. However, this week I spent a lot of time looking out the window at rain, and wind, and even snow muttering that if I were a Real Gardener I wouldn’t let poor weather stop me from attending to all the chores that needed attending to!

After five days of below freezing tempeatures, the low temperature today was 27 degrees. After the first two hard frost the dahlia foliage was killed, but I haven’t yet made it out to dig up the tubers and let them dry. Last year I packed my increased number of tubers away in barely damp peat moss and left them in the basement (a fairly constant 50 degrees. I used an unclosed plastic bag and a defunct picnic cooler as the storage unit.  I checked them a couple of times over the course of the winter and they remained firm. By the time I thought about potting them up to get a head start on the season, they were already sending out shoots. The weather this week is supposed to be fine, even warm. I hope the tubers will be sound when I dig them up. This year I am planning to mark the dug tubers with an ID, variety, or at least color name. That will make next year’s garden less haphazard.  Add ID tags to the to-do list.

The freezes that killed the dahlias made the gingko trees lose all their leaves at once. Add raking to the list.

I thought I had ripped out all the annuals, but here is whats left of the red zinnias, behind the puple asters. All dead. All needing to be ripped out or cut back for the winter.  Alma Potschke along with various other perennials, needs cutting back, too.

The peonies are dead, too. My to-do list for the past two weeks has noted the necessity to cut them back. This week for sure. My list is growing.

I haven’t been totally idle. I’ve been weeding and digging vegetable beds, adding compost and lime. I’m not done yet. Add that to the list.

The vegetable garden isn’t quite done. The deer snacked on the Brussels sprouts foliage, but most of the sprouts are intact. Some years we have picked the last sprouts for Thanksgiving dinner.

Even in the rain I could pick up bagged leaves from a neighbor for my compost piles. I put three of these huge bags in the black plastic composter, used earlier for a blighted potato planter, The other bags are on and around my regular compost piles. I have a separate compost pile for rough green struff, heavy stems, and questionalbe weed roots.  I do try not to put any weeds with dangerous roots, like quack grass or mint, or tansy, in the regular compost pile. I am looking forward to a spring with lots of available compost.

Anything else on the list?  Well, just a few things. Plant some bulbs, spread more wood chips, put away the hoses, empty, clean and put away flower pots?  What’s on your to-do list?

Bloom is gone, EXCEPT for The Fairy. Both bushes are still blooming. A testament to their hardiness, as well as their loveliness.

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