A short post to round off the weekend – it’s been awhile since I’ve written about the garden, and even longer since I’ve done any appreciable work out there – but now it’s time for fall clean-up!

My co-worker commented the other day that she hates fall clean-up because it’s cold out and there’s no reward in the form of spring anticipation – but with the lovely weather this morning I was glad to have a little excuse to be outside for a couple of hours. And of course, reward is all a matter of perspective – I was prepping for garlic – and I can’t help being excited for that!

There’s some changes afoot in our backyard right now – I decided some time ago to get rid of the pink-flowering dogwood tree and the berberis in the bed beside the studio. Last month I dug out the berberis, today was the dogwood’s turn to go. Taking advantage of the tree and shrub sale at GardenWorks, I picked up two plums (an Italian and a Yakima)  to stick in that side bed, and plan to build the rest of it up with flowers in the spring. (You can see how bare that side of the yard looks now in the photo above)

Besides that I:

• pulled the mildewy squash plants out
• pulled out the pole beans and took the large bean pods to dry for seed
• pulled up the scraggly tomato plants
• spread bags of mushroom manure (freebies from a neighbour) in two of the boxes – later this month I’ll do the other four boxes to top them up
• additionally added soil and compost to one of the boxes in preparation for planting garlic!

Along with the two plum trees, I’ve got two new blueberry bushes and about 100 spring-flowering bulbs to put in when we get back from NYC. Plus the garlic, and the rest of the clean-up that needs to get done before the real rains come.

Here’s an August garden photo for contrast: