Mid October

Mid October and no hard frost. The garden is beginning to look a little sad. I spent the entire weekend cutting out spent flowers, picking up some of my garden ornaments, and raking leaves. My aging muscles ached last night before I was done. Pond temps are in the mid 50's. I still haven't dug up any of the bulbs yet and 2 of my elephant ears still seem to be holding on despite the cool nights. Everything else has already been brought inside and put under the lights in the basement. Harry is off bow hunting, so I've begun simply stacking my garden ornaments in one place beside the garage. He hates having to find places for all my "junk" every winter. With only 1 small garage we always have space issues so every fall I have to listen to him "bi**ch" all the while he's up on the ladder and I'm handing him stuff to put up above the cars in the garage. Its a seasonal thing that I endour every year and I just try to keep my mouth shut as I appreciate the help. When he returns on Thursday, we will also drain the upper pond and make the annual fall fish move. Bringing some of the smaller favorites into the house basement pond, while the others will be moved to the lower, larger pond. Again, I'll beg him to leave the water fall running for a little longer and again he'll remind me that I'll be left to try to get the pumps out myself, if we wait too long as he will again leave to go deer hunting. (something I've had to do before during an unexpected deep freeze that almost froze the pumps solid) Not fun.
The walnut tree has finally gave up. All the nuts are down. There are still a few leaves up there along with a million sticks that must fall too. But, the big clean up is done. Thank god!!! What a mess. The gardens, though, are still trying to hang in there. I still have one tomato plant that still has fruit hanging on. The plant looks like a little pathetic Christmas tree. I have 2 zucchinis also. I'm purposely not picking one so I can see how huge it will get before the plant dies. It's already as big as my largest koi. The Virginia Creeper is a brilliant red. They've been sneaky, creeping along, camouflaged in their greenness, but they can't hide now; they've been betrayed in their moment of glory.
Have you noticed how dark it is in the morning? I always feed the fish before I leave for work at 7:00am. This am it was still very dark out. Time to switch to 'one a days" and use the fall blend of food. I also notice that while my water is crystal clear, the string algae is back. It's been gone all summer, but with the cooler water it now has resurfaced covering the whole bottom of my stream area. We also must have 50 or so babies this year. Something we've never had before either. There is no catching them in the big pond, so they'll have to ride out the winter there. Hopefully they'll have enough fat. There's such a big difference in size too. Some are almost 6 inches long already while others are a mere 1 inch! All the problems with the fish in the ponds, seems to have subsided. I continue to use Med-zyme in the water to try to get ahead of the bad bacteria. We'll see. It's not been a good fall for my fish. Seems others are having a few problems too. I've been out on a half dozen fish calls as of late regarding ulcers.
The mums are yelling for attention. The roses are holding on for dear life too. The honking geese fly over every morning as I step out the door. The only thing I haven't seen this year yet is the 2 million Cedar Wax-wings that fly through and eat the berries from my cedar and crap all over every rock and surface in my yard. They come every year, and yet I haven't seen them yet. I got my fingers crossed that maybe they got side tracked or found someone else's pond to crap and bathe in this year. That's a mess I won't miss...just seems odd.... In the mean time I ache all over from the weekend of pruning. More aspirin....wheres my aspirin?