A soothing Sunday (virtual) ramble, thanks to ace photographer / commentor Ema:
Central Park colors, on 11/10/23, walking from the Great Lawn to the Ramble.
(Sorry quality isn’t the best. I didn’t have my iPhone with me; you don’t even want to know what I had to use.)
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Send me more photos, jackals… or it’ll be random garden-related article posts next week and every week!
What’s going on in your garden (wrap-up / indoor / retrospective / planning), this week?
Rose Weiss
I live on the southern Oregon coast so mostly evergreens here, predominately fir trees. But it’s a joy to see scattered color every fall. and of course if you drive an hour east into the mountains there’s a beautiful display such as Ema has shown us. I have a few fruit trees and such so I get fall color a little even here at home, mixed in with the evergreens.
Rose Weiss
BTW Happy Diwali! Light some candles and hope that the gods continue to be gracious!
John Revolta
Woooo!
Rose Weiss
@John Revolta: So someone else is awake at this ungodly hour! I usually am not but I made the mistake of taking a nap earlier.
mrmoshpotato
Anyone else feel threatened? :)
Rose Weiss
Any photos from me would show everything neglected and overgrown. I used to spend 4 or 5 hours every day working in the garden, keeping it all trimmed and beautiful, but then other projects took my attention for some years, then my darling husband died, and suddenly I felt old. I just can’t keep every weed pulled or every bush trimmed any more, so my garden is a mess.
VeniceRiley
Imagine a 95lB puppy crashing through, peeing on, and stepping on all your plants, bushes, and flowers. Reggie likes to stand on lavender to pee. It keeps the stream from reaching his front ankles.
The central lawn needs mowing, but it’s been raining. There are massive poops need picking! Many of those are 2 scoops. I’m out of large poo bags.
Were the lovely summer flowers worth it? You betcha!
Rose Weiss
@VeniceRiley: Yeah, I love all the rhodies , azaleas, columbines, and finally foxgloves blooming through the spring and early summer – no intervention from humans needed!
satby
Beautiful fall pictures ema, the quality is fine!
@mrmoshpotato: I sent some Friday, act surprised if they post 😉
Still about 4 more days of balmy (for November) weather ahead and this may be the first fall I get most of my garden put away reasonably well before real winter sets in. Supposed to be an El Nino year, so predictions are for warmer with less snow. It’s already confused my rhododendron enough that it bloomed again. Just a few blossoms, but that many less for spring I imagine.
satby
@Rose Weiss: Condolences on the loss of your husband. It’s so hard to keep up on it all by yourself.
Hire someone, even if it’s only for a one time cleanup that lets you pick it up from there. It really is worth it just to be able to look out the window and not feel the frustration and regret.
OzarkHillbilly
@Rose Weiss: So is mine. Never stopped me from submitting pics.
OzarkHillbilly
Lovely pics Ema, thanx.
No real garden news from me but this is outdoors anyway. Since my woodcutter died last January, I have been on my own for collecting wood for the woodstove. The weather this past summer was very cooperative in felling trees and limbs all over the tri-county area. I didn’t have to travel very far in any direction to fill the bed of my truck. A little chainsaw work (I have an electric one too now! Hooray for me!) and it was all the proper length. Now to split it…
I don’t own a logsplitter and have no real desire to, so I’ve always rented one from a hardware store in town. Oooopps, they aren’t renting them anymore. Nobody close is either. So I started looking on Craigslist and pretty much struck out and now I have so much on my plate that finding the time to go look at used logsplitters is just not available.
So I began eyeing up my splitting maul, a thing I haven’t even picked up since my last (failed) shoulder surgery. Desperation being the father of really stupid things I thought I’d give it a try. If it hurt too much I would stop. Understanding that it hurts all the time now, I did not expect much from it.
1/4 of a rank later I still wasn’t feeling any excess pain. Caution being something I don’t exercise very often it occurred to me that stopping to wait and see how it felt in the AM might be a good idea. I did and it was fine.
So now I can go back to my old routine of splitting a little bit in the evenings and stacking it in the mornings.
JPL
Thank you for sharing your pics with us. The leaves in my yard really lit up this year in the full sun and after last years turn brown and fall, it was nice.
The Atlanta area hasn’t received significant snow in awhile, and I guess we are due. The imps would be thrilled. Me not so much, but at least this time, I’ll be sure to stay close to home.
rikyrah
Good Morning, Everyone😊😊😊
JPL
@OzarkHillbilly: I am thinking that come Tuesday morning you’ll wish you didn’t overdo.
Make sure you take your time.
kalakal
How lovely, it’s good to see autumn even at a remove. Thank you
OzarkHillbilly
@JPL: I engaged in my little trial Wednesday/Thursday eve. I’m good to go.
randy khan
Lovely.
Geo Wilcox
They make special glasses for color blind people so they can see the fall colors:
https://moco360.media/2023/11/03/colorblind-people-enjoy-fall-colors-at-montgomery-parks-thanks-to-a-pair-of-special-glasses/
Jeffery
@Rose Weiss: I am barely managing to keep it remotely together. It’s been doing what it wants anyway. Every year there is a plan. Then the weather and plants decide what they will do. I do a little editing if the energy is there to do so.
sab
My ward’s day for citywide leaf pickup is next Thursday, and it is the first time I can remember that all the leaves were off the trees in time for the pickup.
ema
Thank you all!
CCL
@ema: I like them all…but especially the second and third ones from the top. And oooh, the last one, too!
WaterGirl
@ema: Love the fall color!
@OzarkHillbilly: Oh, happy day! So happy that worked out.
WaterGirl
@Geo Wilcox: I teared up reading that, so wonderful for people to be able to see the colors.
O. Felix Culpa
The leaves on our trees fell down in a whoosh last week. It snowed on Friday. In Albuquerque. Big fat wet flakes, but not enough to stick in town, although one can see traces of white on the Sandia Mountains.
Miss Bianca
@OzarkHillbilly: We use a maul up here at the Mountain Hacienda. Although if I were on my own I might break down and get a log splitter. Some of the trees that D cuts down have over a 20″ circumference even as logs, and I *can* split those ones open, eventually, but it takes a ton of work.
ETA: I’m amazed that there’s so much color in November east of the Mississippi – here we’ve had a couple of snows and hard freezes and “all the leaves are brown”, as a certain favorite song has it.
JAM
I wanted to send in harvest pics as Anne requested, but all I had left was my (so far) rejected tomatoes and jalapeño jelly in jars. I remember taking some nice pics of vegetables in bowls and baskets in my early gardening years, but I guess I lost them all with my last (destroyed) phone.
scav
@Jeffery: Gardening is so often a collaboration at best. The weather, the plants (invited and otherwise), the diners, the undergardeners (deer and rabbits are ardently into topiary here), everyone has their own plans — or at least certainly their own contributions. Editing and nudging is indeed sometimes the way to go. Contribution to be grateful for this week was the howling wind (we even lost power) that blew most of the leaves into the strait. A few tidy piles to scoop up in nooks that provoked vortices and that bit’s done.