Burn Notice

As mentioned many times this past season, Cincinnati and neighboring areas are suffering a drought – with little sign of abating soon. Falls are typically dry for this area but we haven’t seen more than a couple days of rain since July. While this has produced a nice Fall, weather-wise, yards look horrible, leaves were never quite as beautiful as some years, and the ground is too hard to plant perrennials or bulbs.  So, with those jobs not possible, we really did find the time to do clean up instead of adding another 100 or so daffodils to the Way Back.

With all the clean up, the compost bin and additional hidden piles are full and three large debris piles are resting in Big Garden. The fire pit is also full. While, in 17 years, we have never yet run out of firewood, we are now going into the stockpiling phase and that is not good. When we moved here, the former owner left us two huge piles out in the open – small cars could have rested below the clippings without notice. I can’t bear to see us headed back in that direction!

But, one thing is fairly clear, this Fall is probably not one to enjoy sitting around a fire ring roasting marshmallows and that is a shame! We miss the family time and we will miss the opportunity to invite friends to join us. Not to mention the new-to-us picnic table I stained a lovely shade of purple to use for fire-side entertaining… Guess I will be showing it off in the Spring.

Nov 7 – We really did it!

Today, all four of us spent about an hour pulling out cornstalks, cutting back perennials, removing seed heads from sunflowers and generally pulling out all the debris!

 

While not a much fun as in the spring, when fresh little sprouts can then be seen, it was a satisfying feeling to know I will have so mush work to do later on. I am really proud of myself for doing this – hope I will be reworded with an earlier start next year.

 

Next on my list should be an accurate evaluation of what grew well and should return and what should be dropped. Then I can hit the ground running in January and order seeds early enough too.