This has been an interesting fall. November was so warm and we received enough rain to keep things seeming like spring time. I know a lot of people have been reluctant to do the deed with their summer flower beds and containers. I couldn’t make myself pull some of my Coleus and vinca plants that were surrounding my pansy planting at the bed in front of the nursery. They were blending in nicely with the winter annuals and I figured I would have enough winter annuals this late to figure out something that would work when they do finally get bit by the cold.
Back in October I backed the whole bed up with Foxgloves and Snapdragons so the worst case scenario would be some big, fat and green Foxgloves preparing for a very early spring bloom. I have added 200 Daffodil bulbs to the bed so that the deeper into late winter we get the more interesting this should get. Now that we have finally had a hard frost I will be forced into cleaning up those plants that are black and mushy and go ahead and move on into winter. The rye grass that I planted back in October is now thick and green, it looks great against the winter annuals that are the main characters of this show. My Petunia hanging baskets are still hanging in there but they have not faired as well as some of those from the past. I had some that lasted 5 years. I would let them hang out there until the temperatures reached the upper 20’s then I would take them back to the greenhouses and cut them back, put them on simmer for a couple of months then hang them back up.
This year they started to look a little worn at the end so back in October I planted up some winter baskets to replace them with. In each basket I put a Procumbens Juniper, Asparagus Fern, Snap Dragons, cascading Pansies and some Carolina Jessamine. The Procumbens will slowly cascade over the 24 inch baskets edge and it will give a hardy, wintered look. The Carolina Jessamine is dark green and blooming yellow right now
and I expect they will be in bloom again right around the same dates as the Daffodils, at least that is my hope. By the time spring arrives the vine should be hanging low and twisting itself all around the basket and the pole it is hung from. Now that it has gotten cold enough I will hang the new baskets up to freshen up the look.
I really have not had much time to pay much attention to the beds since Christmas trees came in around mid November. Once they hit the ground it’s all hands on board until we get them unpacked, stood up, priced, sold and delivered. This year they Christmas trees came directly from a tree farmer in North Carolina who wasn’t affected by the flooding. The trees that he sent to us were as perfect as they could be. We knew when we were unloading them that they were going to be good ones even though they were tightly bound in strings so they could all fit on the truck. When we are handling the trees from the truck to the posts where we stand them up we can feel the weight of them, when they are lightweight that is a bad sign that they are already drying out, not good, it can be hard to get them to start drinking water again so they will still be green for Christmas. When they are really heavy like this years trees were they are holding water. We sell them under a covered area in case our November gets warm like this one did.
Once we sell a tree and put the stand on it we put them in a sold area under shade cloth with nightly irrigation with a stand that is full of water until we deliver the tree to its new owners home. This year we sold most of our trees before December first. I dare say we might be out of trees by 10th of December this year. People bought trees early this year since there are fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas and I think they were just ready to declare the Christmas season is open. Delivering the Christmas trees is fun. Me and one other guy are the tree delivery guys. We load up as many trees as we can in the order that they will be coming off the trailer.
We can take up to 9 trees at a time depending on the size. We find a quiet spot
somewhere and figure out our routes so we don’t have to do too much crisscrossing. A
mornings worth of trees could be going to Brandon, Jackson, Clinton and some of the far
reaches of Madison county so it’s important that we don’t do to much extra driving. We have to make it back in time to catch a lunch, load up for our afternoon deliveries which usually takes us on similar routes to who knows where. It’s always fun to knock on the door when you are delivering the families Christmas trees. Usually the kids are exited to watch us drag a huge tree into their domain and stand up the tree and turn it so the good side is showing. Their eyes light up when they realize it’s time to get serious about getting that wish list in front of the right eyes.
Often we find ourselves setting up the tree while the whole family is partying and watching
football, we get to keep up with the scores as we go from house to house dropping off the
Christmas cheer. I started being the guy sitting in the passenger seat of the Christmas
tree/poinsettia delivery truck when I was 12 years old. Back then we had to use a map to find the houses. Most, but not all of the houses would have their numbers painted on the curb in front of their houses. Some of the houses would have their numbers near the door and some would not have numbers at all and we would have to use our processes of elimination skills.
Back in those days I don’t remember going as far away as we go now but there was a lot more driving around “lost” and guessing. Now we can simply type in the address, call the customer with an ETA and turn our brains off until we arrive. It’s fun either way, no one is not glad to see the Christmas trees delivery guy show up. At least we haven’t had to deliver to the Grinch yet. Mimi and I are getting home well after dark these days so we haven’t had much time to see our back yard. It surprises us every time how long it takes for the fall color to start showing. I get in my head that we start seeing red in October. We will still waiting for our Maples and Chinese Pistache and some others to start the show in early November when we check the dates on last years photos of the garden to realize it’s really about now that the deepest colors blaze. I guess the dates vary every year due to temperatures and the amount of moisture that our ground receives in the summer. We have winterized our irrigation system and wrapped any exposed pipes to prepare for the Mississippi back and forth weather game that happens in December.
We might be in short sleeves on Christmas or we might be seeing who will step out the furthest on our frozen pond, you never know but I would bet on the short sleeves With a chance of rain. With all the rain that usually comes during these next few months we don’t add to the mulch in our beds. I would rather see things dry out a little between rains and the weeds don’t give us much to worry about. I will add mulch late next spring when things begin to warm up. This is a quiet time of the year in our yard. The birds are getting comfortable around our feeders and we have left as much habitat for them and anything else looking for a natural place to be for the winter months. We have a few kinds of ducks and geese that have used our pond as a landing strip on their way to somewhere. We have a fox living in our woods, we love catching a glimpse of her when she’s being Wiley, thinking we are not looking. I never seem to have my camera when she pops out on a rare occasion. Of course we are surrounded by deer wishing they could get into our yard to munch our plants down, it is fun to watch them moving around as they naturally do. We have a downstairs pair of binoculars and an upstairs pair in case the deer show up and we have a minute to watch them. They can make me late getting out the door in the mornings as I linger, watching them do their thing. We have noticed that often when there are deer milling about there will be a cat or two kind of moving with them. Feral cats know that when
deer are feeding their way through an area they will often get little field animals moving leaving a good chance for a dinner of a mouse or rat or lizard. It’s fun to watch them go into hunting mode. It looks as if they are fantasizing that they are mounting cats hunting, making the same instinctive moves only for a cricket or a leaf blowing in the wind. We happy to see so much biodiversity settling in and getting comfortable in our area.
We intentionally began leaving some areas a little less tidy, letting branches and leaves do what they do in nature so more animals will get comfortable here. I don’t mean to sound like a kook who is letting my yard go for the sake of these things happening. The yard is neat and tidy to the visitors eye but we have designated areas for leaving alone so it feels more like a natural place for natives to set up camp in the hedgerows that exist on the outer parts of our woods. It has been surprising and fun to watch how quickly the animals return when you allow it. I believe the overall health of our little world will be enhanced just by letting things happen. I hope your Christmas season is a peaceful and fun one. Hopefully you can let your yard relax and rest for these winter months. I am hoping we don’t get dealt any real hard winter blows but I am also knowing that is very possible and we will deal with the good and the bad. When it comes to our winter months when it comes right down to it, as they say, it is what it is!
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