And November has rolled in. It was so warm for so long. We actually didn’t get a lot of the fall color we normally get, then we had some cooler days or cooler nights more specifically, and a lot of the leaves changed.

Being good stewards of our woods, and our trees has paid off, because honestly a lot of our leaves and trees looked better than those around us. We had the full range of hues. I love that the variety of trees and plants in my garden which give me my very own leaf peeping season. I don’t have to go to take a drive to see beautiful foliage in the fall. I just go outside.

Anyone who knows me knows I have had a love affair with Japanese Maples my entire life. I am so happy every fall that I have planted all of these wonderful cultivars of Japanese maples around the woodland and shade beds because they give me a display that is extraordinary. They act as my understory trees, and then all around them are towering oak and other trees, including beech.

Some of my beeches were starting to exhibit, the dreaded beech leaf wilt early on in the growing season. We had our trees treated by our arborist who owns Treemendous Tree Care, and I really believe the treatment has helped, and I am hopeful to extend the life of my beech trees.

Also, today I saw something interesting in Garden Photo of the Day from Fine Gardening Magazine:

Garden Perseverance: Successes, Failures, and Lessons from the Garden

The author/editor of the section talks about how we don’t really talk about the Oopsies or mistakes in our gardens. How we only show the pretty pictures for lack of better description.

Respectfully, I disagree. I always talk about the successes and failures, but I look at it differently.

I am always honest as a gardener but failures, are they really failures? If something doesn’t work out it wasn’t meant to be in your garden and you try something else.

I have plenty of plants that never make it mostly because my soil doesn’t like them. But sometimes I try them anyway, just to see if maybe they will work. And guess what? Sometimes they actually succeed and sometimes they don’t. Failures aren’t necessarily failures, they are just plants and aren’t supposed to live there.

There are plants. I absolutely adore that just didn’t make it in this garden. And they had lived in other gardens I had, but after that, then I discovered other plants. and when you brought in your horizons and discover new plants, it’s so much fun. It’s like treasure in your garden.

Now that it’s November I can reflect on my gardening season. We had a lot of periods of drought. We still don’t have enough moisture in the ground. I really did use my water barrels, but at times they were almost emptied because we had so little rain except we had a lot of rain in the spring. There were times, including when I was planting bulbs that the ground was like concrete.

Overall, my garden did pretty well, I think. This was a really big year for weeds. And I hate weeds, but I went back to being a realist. I can’t get every weed and every day. I just pulled some. I’m actually still pulling weeds. I still have five bales of pine straw to put down and I will do that and put other beds to sleep. I still only use the pine straw on the shade and woodland beds and a couple of beds that don’t touch any roses or the house.

I lost track of how many hundreds bulbs I planted. A lot of them, went into the lawn to continue my Stinzenplanten project. I really love seeing all the little bulbs come up in the lawn every spring. I realize the lawn gods on either side of us probably think I’m crazy because they see me planting bulbs in my lawn several years in a row.

But I actually have very little lawn left. Most of it is planting beds. But I don’t think a wild meadow look is right for the rest of my gardens in the front so planting the bulbs gives me something else to look at for a while, and then we just cut the grass.

When I first started this garden, I was obsessed with all different kinds of daylilies. Not all of them have survived. the ones with the longest staying power that are still super healthy to this day came from two places: Applied Climatology at the West Chester Growers Market and Morningstar Daylilies in South Jersey.

However, I have started a love affair with regular lilies. Martagons, Oriental and Asiatic. I get some from places like Brent and Becky’s but the majority come from my friend Rose in Minnesota who owns Hartle-Gilman Gardens.

I continue to seek out fun hydrangeas, and managed to squeak a couple more in before the end of the growing season. My rosebushes that seem to have the most staying power are truly the old garden and antique roses.

As I am now close to 14 years in this garden (I am just shy a few months), I am pleased with my progress of really having a four season garden. The four season garden of it all as I have told you many times before was definitely influenced by the late Garden Writer Suzy Bales. Through her writing my eyes were really opened.

Then more locally, the gardening treasures we have in David Culp and Jenny Rose Carey, whom I am lucky to call friends, still continue to teach and inspire. And then, of course there is Monty Don. I will admit I haven’t watched the complete season of Gardeners World from the UK this year. I found it getting a little pedantic, which is not something I’ve ever gotten as a feeling from this series before. I still love the series and I will finish it over the winter months.

The gardening won’t necessarily stop as winter descends, the chores are just different. I want to finally set up my indoor garden tower thing that I got for Christmas last year to do my hydroponic kind of garden. I have seeds waiting to try. We will see how well it does. I just haven’t had time to do that inside with things outside during the growing season. I also have 20 some odd Amaryllis bulbs waiting to come inside and go in the dark, but it hasn’t gotten cold enough yet.  but the indoor jungle is doing really well in the Christmas cactus department. 

Outside I have some Camellias showing their stuff and I also had some witch hazel give me a show.

So I still have stuff to clean up outside, like I said earlier and more pine straw to put down, then I will think about what I’m doing next year. Because if you’re a gardener, you have the things that are established and then as you walk around in the winter, you look at the spaces and wonder what else you can do because a garden evolves. I do know that I have to start my seeds earlier for my tomatoes and chili peppers.

Well, that’s all I’ve got for all of you today. Signing off wishing you all a Happy Thanksgiving a little early.