Freeze Warning

Tonight we are supposed to get our first hard freeze of the fall season. One station says 32F, another says it might not get quite that low. Last night we had a cold wind and about 38--that was enough to finish off our moonflower vine, and the cardinal flowers look a bit peaked as well. On Monday I wrote about seeing the yellow butterflies on the cardinal flowers. That apparently was their farewell before taking off for wherever they spend the winter--they haven't been back.

This was how the front of the house looked about a week ago. Yesterday I took the picture of our backyard neighbor's sassafras tree (left) which is starting to turn its usual brilliant orange. The freeze may cause all of these to just fall off, unfortunately.


Almost every fall we buy mums at Thies Farm, our local produce market and garden center. After frost we plant them in the back yard perennial border and wait to see what survives. This collection spans some recent years, but one variety--the white daisy mums Doug gave us a few years back--are still in bud and haven't join the bloom yet. We'll see how hardy these late bloomers prove to be! I cut some of these mums this afternoon and brought them in for bouquets, along with the last of the pinks and zinnias.

Some plants just go all out to bloom right before their growing season ends. We planted two geraniums in a pot back in August to perk up an area where something else had succumbed to the July heat. They looked so winsome that I have brought them in for the winter, along with two smaller rose geraniums and a huge hanging ivy leaf. These will probably go into a decline, but I hope I can get cuttings from them rooted and be ready for some spring color before it's time to go to the garden center again.

Today I spent far too much money on plant stands so that I'd have spots to place some of the larger plants and hanging plants. Would anyone like a magnificent spider plant? We have two eligible for adoption. I also took cuttings of the coleus (right) and a good thing I did it yesterday. They didn't look this well this morning after the nip in the air last night. So, we are surrounded, in fact overrun, by reminders of summer, while the furnace boiler roars away to keep our radiators warm. All snug and thankful, we wait for the next stage of fall's progression.