So this has been an eventful week, though perhaps not one I’d like to repeat. I came down with a rather unpleasant virus at the end of last week which lasted well into the beginning of this one, keeping me from participating in Halloween events with my students. I also lost my voice, so I have been conducting classes with the help of a computer-generated voice (with associated frenetic typing and pauses) and plentiful gesticulations. At least the kids seem to find it entertaining.
1. Somebody flipped the “winter” switch on the night of the 30th, and we all woke up to full-on snowy conditions on Halloween. It stayed this way for most of the week, which would have been fine except that a lot of us still had summer tires on. Any advantage to that extra morning hour from daylight savings was mostly spent on leaving the house early so we could drive on the roads slowly and safely.
2. …and then the rain came last night and we’re back to autumn again for the next week or so. Cutting garden on the left, sports lawn in the middle, vegetable garden to the right. There isn’t much left to do other than putting away some ornaments and cutting down any lingering plant material.
3. My son gave me this Thanksgiving cactus for Mother’s Day. It flowered this week! Very pretty light pink blossoms. I think there were five of them, but I accidentally knocked off one of the buds when I moved it to my classroom window sill. I’ve never had one of these plants before and am very pleased with how easy it’s been to care for.
4. Wrapping up the garden has started me thinking about what projects to tackle next year. I’ve added a new row to the vegetable garden, but that’s mostly because we’re growing more of the things we like eating, so nothing new there. The cutting garden is well on its way, so next year will be more about fine-tuning what is already there. The patch in the picture below is an area next to the garage that needs a bit of cleaning up, and I’m now thinking it’d be the perfect place to put all my shade-loving woodland plants, with a bit of soil improvement. On the list of things to be moved here are: ostrich ferns, various sizes of hostas, columbines, lily of the valley, dicentras, and rhododendrons. There should be plenty of room to bring in some other stuff, too, so I would appreciate any suggestions you might have for zone 6 hardy plants that might do well here.
5. Not from my garden, but my mother-in-law dropped in earlier with these lovely roses for my birthday and I had to take a photo. Why do I not have any red roses in the garden? This is something that needs to be fixed next spring.
6. This is Munchkin. He is a Noctuidae moth caterpillar (known to many as a cutworm). He hitched a ride inside on the last of the gladiolus flowers the night before the first frost. I found him the next morning on the kitchen table about to be eaten by the cat and took pity on him. So now he is in a Nutella jar for the winter, keeping us company as a temporary-pet-come-science-project. Hopefully we will get to see him pupate and metamorphosize, since we didn’t manage to catch any butterfly caterpillars earlier this year. In the meantime, he has been amusing us by producing candy-pink poops from eating pink flowers.
Thanks for visiting and please do check out what the other SoSers are doing over at Jim’s page!
Little Blue and White House 
What a week, I hope you are better now. Good luck with the caterpillar.
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Thank you from the both of us. My voice is starting to come back, slowly but surely, and the caterpillar is still alive, so that’s good too. Especially since he turned up his nose at rose petals and starved himself for a day until I went out and got more gladiolus leaves from the barn, where I luckily had not cut down the potted corms yet. Who knew something so little could be so picky?
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The cactus is a delightful plant. They will last with minimal care for many years. It is very easy to propagate from the little segments which will frequently drop off as you pass by.
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Thanks for the tip about propagation! I will definitely be doing that with any bits that get knocked off, since it seems inevitable the wider it gets. I might have to get it some friends in different colors, too…
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Pink poo. The joys of Six on Saturday. I hope you’re voice returns soon.
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The unexpected is what makes everybody’s posts fun 😀 And thank you, I’m at 30% voice-wise right now, so am crossing my fingers for full volume after the weekend. Currently can do an excellent seal impersonation, though.
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I had a Christmas or Easter cactus when I lived in Scotland that I gave to a friend when I moved abroad. 20 years later it is still going strong.
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20 years! That’s a lofty goal, but one I’m going to aim for now 😀
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A nasty virus is an unfortunate birthday present to be sure. I hope you’re feeling better now and celebrated a belated birthday in style. The weather shift you experienced was quite dramatic but I understand that many parts of the US faced much the same circumstances. In contrast, my area of southern California has been warm-hot and very, very dry so it doesn’t feel much like even our version of fall at the moment.
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Thank you, we did have a lovely cake and my voice is now 30% back, so things are looking up! Are the Santa Anas really bad this year? I still remember a time when my elementary school teacher told me to go close the classroom door when the winds were really strong and the door blew open with me dangling on the handle. Fully in the air and riding a gust like a flapping flag for a moment there!
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When winter arrives in the north… it doesn’t take long to reach countries a little further south….We will have to be careful because it is still mild here. This bouquet of roses is very pretty. I hope you had a great family time for your birthday despite the winter/autumn virus. Get well soon. ( like others I smiled thinking about the candy -pink poo 😅)
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Thank you! Yes, we probably have a 3 to 4 week advance on winter here 😅 Next week, daytime temperatures will go below 0, so I’m rushing to dig up the last of our root crops that we hope to eat before spring!
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Interesting to hear you are also zone 6! We rarely get very cold winters, but when we do it can be 23°C below zero with permafrost for weeks. And not always with snow for ground protection too. Your cactus is pretty! I have one just starting to flower too, but it has turned out to be a rather strange shade of red. Hope you are feeling better now. 🍁
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Thank you, I’m feeling more like myself every day 🙂 I admit that I’ve developed a great fondness for these cactuses and want to get more colors. I shall have to see what is in bloom at the nursery this weekend.
It is funny how hardiness zones work, yes! We are in the southwestern corner of the country and on the coast, so we are protected by the sea from the harsher conditions that are inland. It is rare to go below -10C most of the winter and our coldest is usually in the -15C range. We usually get a pretty thick layer of snow for insulation so everything stays stable. A member of our extended family has an amazing rose garden and admitted to me that he’s never done winter protection at all, which was shocking to hear at the time but now I can see how that might have happened.
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P.S. Happy Birthday! 😃
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💖
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I enjoyed seeing your garden, and what a size you will have fun next year moving your shade loving plants.
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Definitely one of those moments when I’m both looking forward to the work and also a bit daunted as to how much digging and sawing and lifting will be involved 🙂 It’s a long time coming though and seeing other bloggers’ gardens has helped tremendously. Those poor dead gooseberries have been languishing far too long…
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