Gardening in November

These photos are from the 18 of November.  The pin oak at the back is brilliantly red, the sweet gum tree in the front has its leaves in multiple Autumn colors.  The English oak in the back is very yellow. Now, a week later half of the leaves are gone from these trees.  We have had two storms go through with high winds and lots of rain.  The day between the storms I raked leaves off the perennials and paths, unto the grass path where I ran over them with the lawn mower.  I put this leaf mulch on the vegetable garden.  Today, I spread some 20 - 20 - 20 fertilizer over the leaf mulch to help it decay and to provide some good fertile tilth to the vegetable garden. 

The small green leaves are cyclamen coum, I believe.  I do not recall planting a cyclamen in this spot.  It is behind the water tub, so is not easy to find.  This is an area where I weeded and added woodland mulch earlier.  This plant is a bulb, so somehow it survived.  It must be a volunteer from some of the other cyclamen plants I have growing around the garden.  This is a very good plant with evergreen leaves. Mine bloom twice a year... early spring and late fall.    Also, in this area, I put in some other bulbs earlier this Fall, and I see them poking up above the mulch now.  I hope they survive the winter.  I wonder if the heat reflection from the sun on the black water tub is causing them to think its time to start growing.

While skimming leaves off the pond, I found a few dead gold fish.  I had the pump turned off because it was plugging up its filter constantly.  Also, because I had read that it is not good for the fish to have the water cooling at the bottom of the pond where they spend the winter.  Well, I guess that rule applies to clean ponds.  I have not cleaned mine out for two years, so I guess next spring will be the time to do it.  I will probably need to restock the gold fish.  I cleaned the filter and have the pump running again to try to aerate the water.  It was really rather upsetting to see the dead fish.  I will have to pay more attention to keeping part of the surface water open so that the water can absorb more oxygen. 

Sunday will be the Grey Cup CFL football game.  Our B. C. Lions team is sure to win, as they are the best team in the country.