Garden Bloggers Bloom Day

It's November and my garden is almost done for the year.  But not quite!

I'm getting a weak second bloom from some of the [dreaded and abhorred] mums.  

[I don't dread and abhor them.  Up here in New England these are one of the very few late fall blooming plants and by the time they bloom I'll take just about anything!]

There is one tired bloom left on my Snapdragon var. liveslongerthansupposedtoii.  This is the second year on these annuals.  We'll see if they come back again next year.

One last ragged bloom on my Rudbeckia var. probablyCappuccino.  [here, close to the arctic hinterlands, we take what we can get in November and rejoice in it!]

Even my Scabiosa butterfly blue [also known here on The Edge as forever blooming blue] only has one feeble bloom still around.

My Aster var. notwhatitsaidonthelabelus is still going pretty strong.  This whatever variety (it was supposed to be pink) has long outlasted October Skies to be my official Last Blooming Plant of the Year.

Of course Piper is just getting started going strong this late in the year.  She's excited to have cooler weather and is looking forward to snow.  [she's the only one in the house who is].  She celebrates the way all long haired dogs celebrate - by shedding.

Friday Funny

I think this has gone far enough!

Please don't eat my bulbs. 

They are NOT a luxury item.

I did not take money from the gnome % to buy them.

November

It's November and at the Edge that means one thing.

It is time to gather forces for the War on Christmas.

The War lasts from the date of the first Christmas commercial through Thanksgiving.  I'm not much of a warrior - third spear carrier on the left, that's me.  But I get so tired of the commercials and the same old Christmas songs.  It seems like the advertising business just sucks all of the Holiday Spirit out of the Season.

So until Thanksgiving I make it my pledge to NOT purchase anything related to Christmas - no decorations, no tree, no wrapping paper, nothing.

The war isn't going very well this year. 

The Husband and I went to the Pompeii exhibit at the Museum of Science (it's a traveling exhibit and it's a good one - if you get a chance you should see it) and popping into the gift shop I found....

It's amazing!

I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it.

I had to break my pledge.

It's a Velociraptor Christmas Tree Ornament!

Ta-Da!

The Soldiers of Perpetual Spending scored a victory today.

How could I resist?

[what does this have to do with Gardening or Nature?  Absolutely nothing.  But there is nothing much going on in the garden and there won't be until spring so I have to come up with something to blog about!  That's the other thing about November.  Time to switch from blogging about stuff outside to blogging about house plants.  I'd rather have a longer gardening season.]

Dedicated Gardener

A Dedicated Gardener (TM) stands at the edge of her newest bed and looks at the areas of freshly turned dirt.  Areas where she hurriedly planted bulbs this morning. 

There aren't enough of them, she thinks. 

She shivers in the cold wind.

Is there time to run up to the nearest bulb store and buy about 100 more daffodil bulbs and get them in before the N'orester arrives?

A drop of cold rain hits her nose.

She signs.  Guess not.

She hopes the weather next weekend is better.

Freaky Friday

It's the last Friday of October.  Late Fall, right?  The leaves are still on most of the trees.

So what is THIS?

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO[breathe, breathe]OOOOOOOOOOOOOO!

I have to admit the pattern of ice on my windshield is nice to look at.  Not so nice to have to scrape off, though.  Time to clean out the garage so I can park inside again.

This better melt in time for me to plant the rest of my bulbs this weekend.  (see, this post does have something to do with gardening!)

Better Hurry!

The local weather is saying we might get the end of the world snow tonight.

NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO[breathe,breathe]OOOOOOOOOOO!

I'd better hurry up with my fall end-of-season chores.

Like picking up these grape tomatoes so I don't have thousands of seedlings in the spring.

I cut back the sage by half and have the cuttings drying on a rack in the basement next to the rack of oregano.

[I say rack but I mean those nursery flats with a lot of holes in the bottom to allow for good air circulation.  Once you clean them they are great for drying herbs]

And there are the bulbs.  I picked up these forty tulips at Messelar Bulb Co last Saturday and put them in the ground on Sunday.  Messelar is just up the road from us so it's a quick drive up to their house and into what was probably originally a garage to look through racks and racks of bins.  Support your local business.  

[Of course they ship the bulbs in so maybe I'm supporting the Dutch Bulb Mafia.  I assume there is a Dutch Bulb Mafia but they intimidate all of the news sources so no one reports on them.  I means, really, if you were to admit you knew about them you would never, ever be able to buy bulbs again and they might come by in the middle of winter and dig up your precious plants before spring.  {Or is that squirrels?  Or do the squirrels work for the Dutch Bulb Mafia?  Inquiring minds want to know!}  Anyway I'm not taking a chance!  My official position is that there is NO Dutch Bulb Mafia.  {Please don't dig up my tulips.}]

The rest of my bulbs sit in a box in my office.  Brent and Becky shipped about a week too late so instead of being able to plant during the nice weather last weekend I'll be out in the forty degree weather on Sunday trying to get the bulbs in the ground before the ground freezes for the winter.

Brrrr.

Strangely enough I'm already ready for spring...

It's The End

It's The End.

No, not of the world.  That was Tuesday.

No, not of the vegetable garden.  That was a week or so ago.

It's the end.

Of the Water Year, that is.

I measure and report rainfall for a national organization called CoCoRaHS (the community collaborative rain, hail and snow network).  This is the where forecasters, weather reporters, climatologists and meteorologist go to find detailed information about small scale rainfall patterns (these can be used for things like drought monitoring, calibrating radar estimates of rainfall and who knows what all else).

This data used to be collected by the National Weather Service before budget cuts.

One of the perks is that at the end of the year I get a report that contains all of the data.

Here's my 2011 rainfall by month graph.  August was a wet month!  Well, we had one day with over three inches of rain and that pushed us out of the normal range.

This is great.  I had been recording rainfall in my garden journal.  And then I got neglectful of that information.  [And then I got neglectful about the everything else in the journal]  But NOW someone else has pulled the data together and I can use it to get an idea of why certain plants did well and others didn't.  Or that's the theory anyway.

The bad part about participating in CoCoRaHS - I also have to measure snowfall all winter.

Bleh.