Bike trail behind the house

Lindalana, your yard is still looking good! My plants are tired too. I did a hard cut back on my hydrangea tree. It was damaged by the bad rain we had and hadn’t been cut back in a while. My surgery is Monday so today Bert is cutting back the hostas. I’m
not helping cause God forbid I jab myself in the arm with the clippers or some such freak thing. I know it’s early, but it’s best to get it done. He’ll do the slug drench when we get a string of dry weather. The pots are all set to move when it’s time, probably not until mid October. Only things looking good are he fall perennials.

debra

Your gardens look great! We have had drought for quite a while now, so my garden looks positively dreadful, lol.

Lindalana your garden looks great! Mine is horrible. It didn't start off too good to begin with, with our LONG cold, gloomy spring, and then we had a very hot, very dry summer - it's still dry here. My hostas in particular are in rough shape. Most of them are burnt and dried up.

My dahlias are doing well, and my evergreens and actually my hydrangeas too are hanging in there, Nothing photo-worthy though lol.

:)

Dee

Ah,somewhat intimidated by all the fabulous gardens and photos.. Mine are categorically not like any of them. A mishmash resulting from over enthusiastic plant raising and incoherent stuffing. The allotment is overrun...but my garden at home has become a mad jungle since we finally got some rain. But anyway, here are some pics from the plot.

Selinum wallichianum, sphaeralcea incana, salvia microphylla, bupleurum and verbena 'Bampton',

Well, im just happy you posted something. i dont think ive ever seen a photo of your garden…..have you been posting photos for a while and i missed them?

i need to use my tablet so the photos are bigger,

this is probably a rude question on any forum and it reveals a rigid streak in my brain:

i dont know what to call you!!

i just can't get used to Suzy Jackson. I am stuck on Campanula. when im really with familar with a poster i dont like using their houzz ”name” though i see the conveniece for copy / pasting an answer , And youve had a few iterations here, havent you.?

well, if your preferred nom de guerre is Suzie Jackson, thats who you are. I hope you are not offended by my attack on your autonomy!

and thanks for the photos.

Fall happened way too fast here too ! I think my hostas are enjoying the chilly wet fall weather, though - I'll head out tomorrow, rain or shine, to take a few pictures. I actually am a very new hosta person; although I've had some hostas for a decade, I've only recently been appreciating them for what they offer, slow learner here

Thank you everyone for posting! Always nice to hear what other gardeners are dealing with. Debra, it is lovely to see how much order you injecting into your garden, I just wish I was so more restrained in my plantings. Of course you need clean up now but am sure hostas will not miss a bit come spring. Do you cut your hostas with scissors and bleach?

I am sucker for anemones, used to have large patches of them in old house. I am more on line with Suzy, let things run and overrun, love how it created colorful jungle, thank you for sharing pics and some plants are rather rare in cultivation. Do you grow them from seed?

Hostas are unusual plants, they grow old as humans and develop character, wrinkles and crinkles. While the same variety they are also different garden to garden too. Their genetics are so different from other plants too, not sure if there is plant similar to hosta layered genes.

O Marie, I miss being campanula. It has taken me ages to summon enough competence (and working tech) to manage to take and upload any pics at all (I had to change my names/accounts too cos of various reasons. I can just about envisage being able to upload pics...just as the gardens have tipped over into seasonal chaos. But heya...next spring, I live in hope. I may even have managed to do some of the garden tasks which I started back in 2011 (such as rendering and capping the raised beds). The allotment will always be a complete mess because it is an allotment (so some rules even I dare not ignore), it's a bike ride away and I am a penniless pensioner with no extra income). Yes, I grow nearly everything from seed because that's the part of gardening I love the best. Unlike the offspring (who never bloody well leave), the minute plants are out of the greenhouse, they are 'in the wild' and have to fend for themselves (so frequently forgotten).

I had a solitary hosta, years ago, but no matter what strategies I employed (and I tried them all, from nematodes to moats), within days (hours) of unfurling, it looked like something I may have knitted when drunk, under cover of darkness...then ragged around by the sheepdog for an hour or so.

A couple of hostas

Oh gosh. I wish I had lots of news (was planning to clear the weeds out front and readying the yard for planting native perennial plugs and cleaning up the shrubs come spring, but other than what I can see from inside (a few native hydrangeas, some Solidago that appeared and was not planted by me), and hostas. This is the time of year I love being outside, but a TKR three weeks ago has sidelined me. So many plans. Sigh.

My garden is looking great! This is the time of year when I feel it shows my strength and growth as a gardener - when you have things going into fall and not only the showier spring and summer months. Last weekend I happened to be out front and a neighbour passed by and asked if she could come in the back and see. I said sure; I knew she wanted to have a quick life catch up as well. She said it looked good - but isn’t it a bit…overgrown?? And I bristled a bit inside. Truth is, that neighbour is a bit “awkward” so you come to expect comments like that. Secondly, that is a bit of a theme in my garden - you are supposed to feel secondary to it, the garden is supposed to overwhelm you. Thirdly, yes slightly touchy on that because the truth is it’s a fine balance between order and chaos, and I wasn’t able to cut back and define all the areas I meant to or had already started a bit and never got to continue and finish in my vision- particularly when neighbours want to drop in when you are in the middle of things! So my awkward neighbour expressed something which only I should have or would have expressed, had she not awkwardly done so first LOL. And yes, we still had a nice visit and I don’t hold it against her :-)

"...the truth is it’s a fine balance between order and chaos..."

Exactly!

My garden isn't looking half-bad here in mid-October. Most of my annuals are still going strong, we haven't had a killing frost yet, just light frost back on the property but nothing got hit up by the house. So I'm enjoying the potted displays out on the deck. My asters are blooming beautifully; I have "Purple Dome" and man this one is vigorous if it's happy - I ended up taking multiple divisions to fill in an area that needed a shot of fall color out the window. (I'm big on viewing out the window, in case you never picked up on that LOL!).

I re-arranged the bed off the patio, I've been trying to get this area right since I originally put in the beds and there's always something I'm just not happy with. So we'll see what the result is next season. Surprisingly, the monkshood and asters I transplanted never missed a beat, they're still in full bloom and I'm quite enjoying them.

I can't really do too much of anything for the rest of the fall, I had a procedure on my hip and am activity limited, so it is what it is (read: the vegetable garden is still a weedy sh*tshow...). Oh well. I'll just do what I can to cut down perennials that I can without bending or squatting too much and leave the rest for spring. I am so glad I invested in power tools for this job a couple of years ago!

We still have not had a freeze. Here’s a few pics from today:

Looks good Debra, we did have one night when temps got down to 31 but with all the tree cover it didn't hit the hostas. I have started pulling off the hosta leaves that are easy and ready.

A very disappointing year for me with all the deer and rabbit damage. at least 50 of my hostas have been eaten right down to the ground. I know most will come back next year but much smaller. Very discouraging, my heart just is not in it.

Just had to take a picture of this 'Touch of Frost' a couple of days ago, it's sure hanging in there.

It's always nice to find a bit of fresh colour this time of year. It's Viola odorata showing a late flush of flowers, guess it's in training for early spring....

Pieter

Most all my hostas are now mush or close to it but there's a couple that don't know when to quit...

This is an OP seedling out of 'Sea Octopus' and I refer to this as "Octopus' Garden" and the other is 'First Frost'....

Pieter

AAnd

In MKE we got nothing

debra

3-1/2 inches northeast of Indianapolis.

We got about 15". Very Lake effect snow. Some counties further from the lake got barely 3". Caught me not prepared, I am barely half way done cleaning beds and setting everything for winter spell. We usually do not go bad like this until end of January or Feb. Seems we get back to warmup soon though. I really need to clean gardens.

Wow! That’s a lot of snow for early November!

The weather here in the PNW is rather different from a good many of you. We're mild. And wet. And there's plenty of signs of what's ahead not too long from now.

This here is a patch of Snowdrops popping up...

And here's some Iris tuberosa making themselves known.

And thank goodness I also spot the occasional Primula flower that hasn't been nibbled on my slugs..

This Helleborus 'Mahogany Snow' is not far from opening!

Pieter

Lucky you Pieter….. today it’s 9 degrees F here in MKE.
debra

Time for a quick update, I guess....

Pieter