X-Ray Vision in the Garden

Last weekend I spent a half-hour

forking through mine before I noticed my trowel

was over on the grass.  Click on image to blow

it up...

Beautiful Friend

It was a fabulous day to be outside, crackling deep blue sky, canada geese honking in their V's overhead.  I was chopping down the last peony foliage, whacking at the blackend coneflower stems, and hearing long-dead Jim Door whisper to me, "This is the end."   I actually like this process, as it gives me---closure!  When things in the flowerbed look so bedraggled and sorry, I love just clomping in there and hacking away what's dead and hauling it off to the compost.  It's so chilly I don't care much about the ticks, either....I climb atop the 5-foot pile and flap the tarpful of detritus, kick it even with my foot, and hop down.  Done.  Now just have to do bulbs, spread on manure/compost, and hope the mulching is adequate for winter.  These heavenlies had to come off my tuteur early, so I popped them into an old inkwell, and a surprising number of them opened for me in the house.