Autumn Day

50s today, but sunny and calm, very nice day to work outside.  Jim cleaned up the garage, brought in the patio furniture and drained and stored all the hoses.

I cleaned up the gardens some more, cut down the geranium wlassovianum even though they still had color.  But without the dried tangle below, the blueberries and amsonias in the Northern Exposure garden look neater and nicer.  This is the first year the blueberrries have some red fall color, but the amsonia taebermontanas haven't turned yellow yet.

I took the kiwi vines out of the white bottomless planters... the soil kept falling out even though I had put hardware cloth in the bottoms.  I chopped them pretty severely, then wrangled the rootballs pretty roughly.  Repotted them in the 14 x 14 square plastic pots and then put the white plastic trellis into the soil... right into the remaining roots.  Some pretty rough handling, I'm afraid!

I also pruned off some large branches at the bottom of the Blackhaw viburnum to limb it up a little into the tree like form I want.  And I took off some tall suckers.  I want to keep this narrow and tree shaped in between the two air conditioners.

The Blackhaw has a dense twiggy branching pattern, and the branches go every which way, so pruning for shape is a challenge.  The Blackhaw doesn't have much color yet.

Isn't this combination of mums and Stewartia pretty?