Indian Summer

 Indian Summer is here.  Friday and Saturday were nice and warm and we reached 75F today.  Blue skies.  No humidity.  Perfection.  We were even able to continue our summer Bloody Marys on the Porch ritual one more week.  It was 50F this morning.  Friends of ours make the world's best Bloody Mary Mix.   If you have a Wegmans in your area, they carry it (and charge less).  It won't be with the other mixes.  They always have a special display for it at our store which moves around a lot.  Sometimes I get fed up searching for it and send someone back tp the stockroom for it.  

I never used to like Bloody Marys at all but my husband got me hooked on it.  I really like them on a warm morning in October!

There were still a few things to be done outside.  I had not cut back everything in this flower bed along the deck.  I wanted to mulch it this fall because there are so many small bulbs planted here that in the late spring the little plants are impossible to mulch around.

If you do cut back perennials, you don't want to cut them back too short.

I have to tease the Ipheion (Star Flower) and Snowdrop leaves up out of the mulch.

We've started on the leaves but more are coming down every minute.  There are so many drifts of nice leaves it is a shame to waste them by mulching them into the woods.  I got out my shredder and filled one of the compost tubes with leaves instead of bagging them. 

The garden shed counter is such a busy place all season scattered with seeds to plant, fertilizer to apply, tools to clean or repair.  Its nice to see it empty for a change.  The only thing left is the last bouquet of the season that I picked last Monday before the dahlias were dug.

I also started digging parsnips.  Now I just need to wait for a cooler day to fire up the oven and roast them.

Warrior Parsnips from Territorial Seed