Fall Clean Up

Today is wet and rainy, in the 40s.  A front is coming through.

Yesterday was partly sunny and in the 50s.  I spent most of the morning out in the yard pulling out the ratty daylily foliage, cutting back the spent stalks of monarda and veronica and coreopsis and other perennials.  I chopped back the heleniums... they were so gorgeous and sunny and bright in the wet summer of '09, but got all brown and ugly this summer.  Even with watering it was just too dry and hot for them.  But they're keepers for next year.  I yanked most of the zinnias and marigolds out.

Berries on the aronia

I found bittersweet seedlings everwhere.  There was even a large fully grown plant twining tightly around an aronia stem already!  I untwisted it and pulled that right out. 

I pulled out all the purple coneflowers from Meadow's Edge. They just never did well, always bug-eaten and floppy and unattractive.  They're gone, and will be replaced with Karl Foerster grass in the spring for a more meadowy look there.

Sprayed the front walk garden with vole deterrant, we'll see if that helps. Tunnels are everywhere.

On the back hill my prized little Norway spruce that had been growing leaps and bounds was completely and totally whacked by a deer.  The entire top leader was chomped off and the bark stripped all the way down the trunk to the middle of the plant.  I cut it down to the middle, took off all the side branches but one to try to start another leader.  Then, in anger, I sprayed the whole area with what was left of the Plantskydd.  Actually, the sprayer was clogged (of course), so I just poured the foul stuff all around.  Pheeeuw.