Saturday, December 4, 2010

Clearing the deck for winter

Beautiful, sunny, cold, windy day today. I sat in the Adirondack chair by my herb barrel this morning. The rosemary has survived the cold that we've had so far, but is full of  leaves. The six lavenders I have in front of the barrels are still living, too, although--you can't see it here--some of the leaves at the bottoms of the stem are getting black. Past the second chair is the petunias. They're green, but dead. The first freeze did for them.


Leaves were piling up around the pots out in the center of the deck. I made up my mind that today I would move all those smaller pots under the shelter of the upper deck--see if that helps the living ones live and get the dead ones out of the way. Next week I will need this deck clear, as I will be dragging my Christmas tree along here to my door to set up in my living room. It really seems as though it was just summer and now I'm getting ready for Christmas. I guess it's partly due to the lovely, mild October we had, which was like an extra month of summer, almost.


I did get all these pots and the furniture moved this afternoon, so that all that's left on the sunny side of the deck are the Adirondack chairs and 1/2-barrel planters along the wall of the house. I did not sweep up the leaves, as my dad told me he has hired a lawn service to come take away the broken part of the tree in our yard (did I post a picture of that?) and clean up the fallen leaves and things in general, and he said one thing they will do is blow the leaves off my deck. So I left them for them.


Here's almost the same shot as above, but with the dog in it. Look how the sunshine makes sort of a nimbus all around him. Pretty.

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