Putting the garden to bed for the winter

These photos are from December 3.  The top one is a geranium leaf in its autumn colors.  I need to propagate  this plant.  It is a blue geranium and has this lovely autumn color.  The second photo is the moss garden.  I have all the leaves picked off it and it is growing nicely.  The last photo is the vegetable garden.  I have been raking the leaves in the front garden off of the hedges and small rock plants, putting them on the grass path and running over them with the lawn mower.  I put the mulched leaves on the vegetable garden and have added some fertilizer to the mix.  I should have some good leaf mold to dig into the garden in the spring.  You can see my few swiss chard plants that I hope will be producing good greens early in the spring.  I have no other winter vegetables this year. 
I got so much done today.  I finished the house cleaning.  Tom and Diane popped in for a visit and we had denver omelettes for lunch followed by tea and shortbread.  Was good to see them, if only for a couple of hours.
Later I raked the front leaves again.  This time I put the mulched leaves on the woodland garden area.  I clipped back some of the front perennials and the garden looks cleaner.  We have been having a very nice autumn, with only a few nights with light frost.  I hope the winter continues the same way.
Yesterday I spent a few hours looking back over my photos from a trip down the Oregon Coast and south, in February of 2006.  I was shooting with my old Canon Powershot A50 in RAW mode.  I have not really taken the time to look at these photos before because I could not easily see them.  Now I can more easily take each one to the RAW converter in Photoshop.  There are a few keepers.  Its great fun playing in the RAW converter, too. 
I have a few more photos of Dan's stuff to tweak for Bruce.  I am loading them to a Megashot gallery.  The day I was shooting was overcast and not very good for shooting.  Ah well, I got snaps of the way it all really looks and I guess that is what they want to see.  Used my dslr and the S3 IS.   Was good practice for me.
Last week I picked up a little Sony DSC W560 for $128.00 at Walmart.   This little camera does panoramas stitched in the camera.  Dan and Irene got a Nikon last week end that does a 360 panorama... more money.  Its going to be Irene's carry around camera.  I have yet to get my Sony operating... have been too busy with other stuff ... and so it goes.  'tis the season!

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. 

October walk to Panama Hill Park

a few photos from a walk to the pond in Panama Hill Park.  The colors were spectacular on October 23.  I can't believe it has been that long ago.  Some of these trees and grasses are still full of color.  There is going to be plenty of berries of all kinds for the birds this winter.
It was coolish today, but no rain.  We have been having light frosts over night.  The humming birds are looking kinda chilled when they cannot get their frozen food.  I have one of the feeders in the house to put out in the morning with warm food for them now.
Saanich now owns all of this Panama Flats area.  I am glad I got a few photos of it when it was being farmed.  I believe it is going to be allowed to turn into a bog.  It is, in actuality, a peat bog.  It had sluice gates to drain it for the farming.  In the winter people used to be able to skate on it a few decades ago.  I hope the pond area remains as is and not part of the bog.  In the winter, more recently there has been lots of water fowl feeding on the flooded crop area.  I hope it remains that way, and the bog revives.
I was out gardening for about 3 hours this afternoon.  I cleaned leaves off the moss garden and paths.  I ran the mower over all the grass areas in the front and back and ended up with two mower bags full of nice chopped up leaves.  This is added to the vegetable garden.  I must get some high nitrogen fertilizer to add to this mix.  There are more leaves on the front tree, so I should have a good thick layer of leaf mulch on the veg. garden by the end of the season.  I cut back a stringy low cedar.. well cut the bottom branches off, and it now looks rather windswept, in my best attempt at a Japanese bonsai writ large. I cut back the Jackamani clematis and cleaned up the daylilies and the simplicity rose, a bit.  Its good to get the exercise and to be on top of the garden clean up.  I wonder how the plants survived when I was not so diligent about leaf clean up!
Do you know what butterfly that cattapiller is going to turn into?  I must look for it in my butterfly book.

mid October color

The Autumn colors are looking terrific.  It has been raining for the last couple of days... not all the time, but enough to put an inch of water into the rain gauge.   Since I am mostly finished my Fall clean up, I can play with my photos.  I hope you can see the rain drop trails in the top photo.  The second one is the coreopsis in its container next to the bird bath.  The bottom one is of a willow I somehow got horn-swaggled into buying at the Rock and Alpine garden show and sale this spring.  Its an interesting story.  Not everyone gets treated to the generosity of a Count... I think that is his actual title.  As I shopped at the sale at the show, I chose a few choice plants ... lewisias if I remember correctly... from on the table, and put them into my tray to buy.  Lo and behold, this man came to my tray, grabbed the lewisias and said 'those are mine'.  I meekly said, 'you can't take my plants!'.  He said, they were in my tray, I just left them on the table while I talked to someone... I suppose it is my own fault' he muttered.  and proceeded to give me these willows, because I had said I was looking for one particular miniature willow.  Well, I must say, after talking to him and saying that he did not have to give me his plants, it was just as much my fault for taking his stuff, I was very generously compensated for the loss of the lewisias I had chosen.  I also learned a lot about the plants.  This was a very enthusiastic plantsman, and truly of some Royal designation, as I found from reading the newsletter, later.  Our city is populated by all kinds of people who find it to be a paradise. .. from rock stars to royalty.  We let them alone to live a normal life, too, it seems.  Life is good on the left coast.
The colors of Autumn are changing very quickly.  Sometimes the light is amazing... I don't think I could capture it with my cameras.  As we had dinner tonight, I watched out the dining room window, as the light faded from the glow on the leaves and color in the sky to grey and black in a matter of minutes.  It was truly marvelous.  And so was the conversation over dinner.  Just as an aside, I think a civilized and interesting dinner hour is wonderful.  I am definitely blessed.
I spent quite a bit of time on Megashot, today.  This was fun, too.  The site is quite fast.  I believe Cyrus is working like crazy to get Version 2 designed, coded and on line, asap.  There are a few glitches in the site since migration, but as the site will be a lot different on version 2 these things should not matter.  (I can't believe I typed CITY instead of SITE in the above sentence.  Yes, the site is like a city, inhabited by friends and as it grows, by people we only see in passing, through the Explore or the Contests or in members photo uploads, or other places. )
I ran into a small annoyance ... Java wanted to update... well hells bells, everything wants to be updated, constantly.  I said No and googled this Java update thing.  After reading some of the answers to my search saying its a virus... eeeek ... everything is a virus...  I found a site that seemed to me to say what it really is... Java seems to have this checking thing running in the background and asking to be updated.  The people on this site say you can disable this annoyance, and your computer will run faster.  ok... I just left it at "no" for now.  I have no idea what Java does, or why I might need it.  According to the geeks on the site, that I tend to believe, it can be disabled with no loss but with an improvement to speed of the cpu.

Hatley Castle in early November

More of the spectacular color out at Hatley Castle earlier this November.
There is still a bit of snow and it is coolish.  I finally have a day rescheduled for my visit to Royal Jubilee.  This is running into the time when we do our annual celebration with Dan and Irene, but its the busy season. 
We now have movies of some of the winners of the megashot.net photos on our Facebook connection.  The next ones will be the Contests photos of the day for each level of the Landscapes Contest and the Black and White contest.  We will have one of all the contest winners of the year, too.  Have a look at my journal on my megashot page to see these marvelous creations.
Yesterday, I cleaned up the light garden a bit and watered all.  I have two phalenopsis in bloom and several African violets.  The little orange trees that I transplanted a few days ago seem to all be surviving. 

More Hatley Castle in November

More photos of the Japanese garden at Hatley Castle from the beginning of November.

Grace and Jim have left for home today.  She left me 30 Queen of the Night tulips that I planted out along the garage.  The dark colors should look good against the white of the garage.  I was to Cannor and bought 30 more tulips that I will be putting along the driveway.... pastel colors.  I also have 7 good sized plastic  pots and saucers.  I have 7 little orange trees that I have grown from pits, in a flower pot.  I will be transplanting them into these new pots and keeping them in the house.  The last time I did this, I left the orange trees out on the deck and they froze, of course.  These pots don't look great, but I really do plan to see these trees produce oranges.
We were out to the Fireside cafe with the Scots on Monday night and tonite to the Dunlop House with Jim and Sheila.  Was all nice. 
We have had a few days of high winds and quite cool weather, with rain.. typical November weather. 

More Hatley Castle in November

I took a few photos of the pagoda in the Japanese garden at Hatley Castle.  and the bench. 

The juncos and other birds are hanging out at the feeder.  I refilled the humming bird feeder today, too.
I gathered a few more apples and made about 4 cups of applesauce.  I added a bit of ginger root, cinamon, and sugar.  Its delicious. 

More Autumn Colors

The front garden, with the liquid amber tree just beginning to change colors.

1931 Buick hood ornament called Mercury... Yes FTD used these cars for deliveries. I have been playing with a few of my old photos with a view to uploading a few on Megashot for the new community called Bygones and Antiques.

I just like it.  

 Another one from May 2009 when we were on the Antiques Auto run to the Sunshine Coast.  I think this was at Gibsons Landing.  Someday, I may get the "Cars" albums finished on my web page.  None of the albums are made, just starting a list.  Its good for reference.  My Travel page is 5 years behind.  Oh well.. maybe next year I will get more done.  Have been very busy with Megashot this year.
Its been a partly sunny, bits of rain kind of day.  When I got up this morning there was a rainbow to greet me.  My photos are not that great, though. 
Yesterday, I cleaned the filter on the pond pump and its running ok again.  The deer are eating the apples, but not all at once.  We have had more apples falling, and so I am taking them across the road to the deer pasture.  We still have apple sauce left from years past.  In talking with our guests it seems they spotted the blue heron on the deck railing this morning!  The bird did not go into the pond, though, just checked things out, again.  They were quite excited to see a deer as well.  :-))  The wilds of Saanich!

This is one of my hostas in its October colors.  I seem to be having quite an adventure with this new uploader. 

This is shooting towards the woodland in my back garden.  In the foreground is the small tree that is in the Arbutus family.  Very messy.  It is dropping berries on the sidewalk now.  The birds are suppose to like it, but I never see them eating these berries.  In the background on the left is a Japanese cedar.  It is an evergreen that is bronze in summer and organish/red now and in winter.  In the middle is the momentary colors of the sumac trees.

I had two fuschias in a cedar planter on the deck this year.  I hope they survive the winter.  I should cover them once the colder weather arrives.

Yesterday I made a birthday card for Irene.  It was quite fun to do.  I hope she likes it. We replenished the ink supply for my printer today.  :-)  It took me several tries to get the card made properly with all four pages of it with the top up and the right reverse side..  fun, though. 
After getting home from shopping and lunch (Squash soup with pesto.. yum) I went out to trim back the branches of the front liquid amber tree.  We had high winds for a few hours last night.  The tree branches were whipping around very close to the living room window.  Our power was out for a few hours. The next wind storm should not be a worry with regard to the branches.  I took the pole pruner saw and cut them back quite far.  One of the branches I had to reach by standing on a chair.  I stood on the chair to cut back the burning bush also.  It is now at a height of about 10 feet and should bush out more.  I trimmed the simplicity rose, also while I was working in that corner.  The roses are nearly finished and I will be soon cutting back all of them.  The cuts on the liquid amber tree are not professional, but they are not too bad.  This should keep the tree in check for a few years now. 
The apple tree is in terrible shape.  I will be pruning it and the plum tree also.  I took a few apples to the deer pasture again.  The deer do seem to be eating them, as they disappeared when I last put a few out there.
I have the humming bird feeder out and are getting visits.  There are numerous birds in the back yard. When I was out today there was a gorgeous little wren no more than 18 inches from me... no camera, alas.  There are uncos, sparrows of different kinds, tit mouse, robins, jays, woodpeckers, alaska robins, wrens, humming birds.   Its a treat to watch them.

Some Autumn Color

Last Sunday we went on the VCCC run with the Bentley, on a sunny warm day.  I took the opportunity to get a photo of the Virginia Creeper that goes up the telephone post by our driveway.  It's colors are spectacular in the sun.  Some other flowers of Autumn are the michaelmas daisies, cyclamens pansies, mums, autumn crocuses, sedums.  The trees are beginning to turn colors and the rains have started.  

I have been walking more.  The housework is slowly getting caught up. 

Megashot is slowly growing.  The critique forum is very active and we have a few new communities.  

I just finished reading a short book on Alexander the Great.  It had a surprising amount of good information for the size of it.  For pure enjoyment, on our trip, and after I read a couple of novels by Rollins.  I picked up a copy of Stephan Hawking's latest book and find it rather tough going.  I am sure it would be far more interesting if I knew more physics or was more interested in the topic.  So, I will delve back into another history on Cyrus the Great, next.

Autumn in the Garden

Some of the colors of Autumn .. unexpected.

Autumn color

I have a few photos that I really like out of the bunch that I shot in my garden a few days ago. The rain had stopped and the flowers still had drops on them, but the light was very good. This is the only one I have ready just now. I did not photoshopping on this at all. I love how it looks like a water color. I imagine I can even see brush strokes in it, with the darker outline on petals and leaves where it might have been sketched before painting.

This is one of the 2 sunflower seeds that I planted, that grew.. decorative sunflowers. My annual seed planting was not a blooming success.

I made the apple pie today and still have enough apples left for two or three pies. It turned out pretty good, with very flaky pastry.

Autumn Colors

The Autumn colors are beginning to put on their show in my garden. This is the neighbors stand of Sumac trees on the right and my sumac on the far left. In the middle is my Japanese cedar which is a bronze green in summer and it goes to bronze orange needles in winter. The sumacs are small trees and sprout new little trees all around the main tree. I have never had any trouble with any toxins in these sumacs. They are a rather short living tree. I like to keep a few of them in my woodland for their gorgeous fall color. Also, they hold their large reddish seed pods all winter. The ever bronze tree looks very good with this Autumn display. I have a pin oak in the same area, but its leaves are still green. I have a virginia creeper that is climbing up its telephone pole at the front. The creeper is just beginning to turn its spectacular red color. I cannot have a creeper in the woodland as it can be very invasive.

Yesterday I gardened for a couple of hours. While pottering around I manged to get quite a bit of clean up done and enjoyed every minute of it. The black bamboo had sent a shoot up in the thyme circle and I managed to get that pulled out almost back to the main clump. The bamboo clump is getting quite big, but I like this 'grass'. It has nice movement in the wind and even at this size still appears light and airy against the darker cedar hedge.

I liberated a few stones from the bed by the garage and added some to the stone path and the rest to the round stones in the moss garden area. I have cleaned the violets and weeds out of the front garden area around the cement container and its iberis and snapdragon plantings. At the back by the garage I added a bag of compost and cleaned up the perennials. This bed needs another bag of compost added and then I should be finished with it for this Fall.

I topped up the pond and watched the fish for awhile. I cleaned up a bit by the firethorn and yew treee and decided that I am going to dig that little area over, removing the iris, improve the soil with compost and put a few of the better iris back. The iris should do better, now that the big eucalyptus tree is gone and they get more sun. I also have to thin out the iris plants that are on the vegetable patch.

Due to the vegetable patch not getting water in July or August, it was non productive again. I have a very few of the annuals coming up... the ones I planted behind the little rockery at the edge of the vegetable garden. I have one tall cosmos just coming into bloom there, now. So, next year, maybe I will just get a few transplants. I should be home next summer to take care of them.