First frost. Better late than never.

Better late than never. We had our first frost of the season on Thursday morning, then another on Friday morning. This cold snap will really kick into overdrive, the changing of the seasonal colors. It seems like overnight, my commute got a little bit more colorful. The leaves are coming down in the yard more rapidly and the flannel sheets feel a bit more inviting.

Then, it warmed up. Yesterday and today have been in the mid sixties. More of the same for this week, even peeking possibly into the 70s once again. Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining or anything. You see, I'm not much of a cold weather person. I don't mind chilly days every once in awhile, but I really do dislike cold. I would rather be hot and try to cool off rather than finding a way to stay warm. I have an aversion to frostbite. Gloves make everything harder to do. Glasses fogging over are a pain. Scraping the windshield in the morning sucks. Shoveling snow? Forget about it.

My wife is just the opposite though. She would love to live up north. She loves the cold, dislikes the heat. But living up north would shorten my growing season. It's already too short as it is. The time it takes to get everything to blooming stage takes too much time. Then at the end of the season, we have our plants winding down. I would love to live in a tropical setting, where there are no seasons. Where my orchids could live out doors all year long, all over the trees, blooming profusely all the time.

I like some things about seasonal change. I love the way nature uses this time to rest. I love to see the physical changes to some of the plants, like my juniper bonsai. Some of them change from a deep green to ambers and purples. The spruces and pines see this as their salvation season, and will reward us with new growth candles in the early spring. Look at the leaves on your deciduous plants in the late summer. They are full of holes and other defects from a season and a half of hard knocks. Bugs eating into them, hail stones and sticks poking holes in them. Burnt edges on some of the maples. It's been a hard life. Time to get rid of the damage, rest up, store some energy and start in the spring all over again. It is quite fascinating.

I think Virginia is a compromise for us though. We have definite seasonal changes, each about the same length. Our "real winter" starts here mid January to early March. February is our hardest month. We have the coldest temperatures and most snowfall during this time. Lately we have had more snow in early March, though. Is it due to global warming? I'm not sure. We should ask Al Gore.

Gardening limbo

I seem to be in garden limbo. Nothing is growing right now. Nothing really needs to be done. Autumn, true autumn has yet to visit me. What do I do?

The River Birch is still green

I just had 5 days off and it rained for 4.5 of it. The fifth day brought a brief respite from the soggy conditions. I awoke to beautiful clear bright blue skies and temps in the low 70s. I thought, Yes! I can get out there and cut the grass I was all ready to do that but my wife reminded me that the yard was still waterlogged and she was right, of course. The grass never really dried out so I was left to do some weeding. And then the clouds rolled in again and it even sprinkled in the evening. Sigh. What to do.

So I took off some wire from my bonsai, only to find that I had waited too long and it cut into the bark. This will heal, in time, but the scars might never fully grow out. The warmer, sunny weather brought out, to my dismay, the dreaded European Hornets again, seeing them in the top of one of my birch trees, I set out to set them straight. Their last ditch effort to get supplies for their nest is now their last. Until next summer, of course.

The crabapple is loaded this year

We have had a very dry September here. September rains are what usually determine how colorful a fall we will have. Here it is, the middle of October and the colors are muted and very few trees are showing signs that it even autumn. Those that are just showing some brown leaves, and not the color as I have seen in the last couple of years. We have not had a frost yet, and that might have something to do with it. The coolest it has been is the mid 40s for a couple of mornings, but that is about it.

Next on the list will be lowering the mower deck, mulching some leaves, cutting spent flower stalks and mulching the bulb beds extra thick this year. It is supposed to be a cold one.

The days are getting shorter and the shadows longer