Sometimes life just is life and you forget that you haven’t written on your gardening blog since August and it’s November.

Well, here in Pennsylvania, we have had the time of it. We had a 42 day or it might’ve been longer stretch without rain. We are still in a drought kind of thing. As far as I’m concerned and we are on a burn band and firewatch and red flag warnings galore because it’s so dry.

I have lost some tree saplings. I won’t know until the spring how many precisely, but I know two of them are red buds and they were natives that I had successfully transplanted from other areas of the garden so that bums me out. They are hard to transplant.

Seriously, it has been really challenging. We use rain barrels and we utilize sprinklers, but you have to be careful about water use. So I think most things have made it through with the exception of some saplings, and I think a couple azaleas have not made it, but I won’t know for sure again until next spring.

It has been so dry. It has been disheartening. I love my garden, but as I try to adapt to climate change, so must it.

I have started in my head to write several posts since August and then I just never got around to it. There has been so much to do in the garden. I have felt a little bit like Sisyphis with the rock going up the hill.

It was so hard to dig in a lot of the bulbs. I planted this year because of the lack of rain, but I did get them all in and earlier this week. I was able to concentrate on the remaining 300 bulbs. I am pleased to announce Stinzenplanten 2024 is complete!

Stinze planting is more of a European thing but a lot of people in the US do it and I love the way it looks. I’ve been working on it for probably three or four years now and what I had left this year just and went in one side of the lawn, so I will have a concentrated POW of pretty little daffodils, crocuses and more hopefully in the spring. Then next year, I will do the other side of the lawn similarly.

And I’m not very scientific about it. What I do is I take my spearheaded spade and I cut rectangles or squares not too huge into the lawn and I push my spade down and pop up the soil and it just comes right out. it’s like a few inches and basically it comes out like in a block. Then I popped the bulbs in. I cover everything up again and kind of stamp the lawn back into place.

We don’t do chemicals or anything on the lawn and we’re not actually huge lawn people so I decided a few years ago when I started reading about this that I would like it. It reminded me of the lawns I saw growing up that in the spring or actually the end of spring into the spring, they were a sea of Galanthus and then little crocuses. Basically my husband doesn’t like to cut the lawn until we really have to in the spring anyway. So these little bulbs come up and after the flowers are done, you eventually cut the lawn. It upsets lawn gods for sure, but me not so much. I like the naturalistic look.

The weather still hasn’t cooled off enough for me too bring in my now cut back amaryllis bulbs and put them to sleep in the dark for a while. They need those cool nights close to freezing a few nights in a row.

Also, I know my readers have followed me as I’ve written about my frustration with the deer. After I had a couple of Azaleas chomped down to bits, I finally contacted a spraying service. I settled on Deer Solution. I’m going to be honest and say their service is really working. It has been three months of spraying and once again the deer are further back in the woods, which is all I want. I just don’t want them in my garden beds. I am still doing some additional spraying on my own of some extra sensitive plants to make sure they survive.

We have another fire weather warning today. Our burn ban is still in effect. It’s really concerning.

In the plus category I have witch hazel blooming and a camellia. And we have a red squirrel and the eastern flying squirrels are back.

Well that’s all I have got for now. Happy gardening!