Today's the dayghosts and goblins come out to play.

Composting Leaves

The leaves have been turning colour for awhile now. Many are on the ground and some trees are almost bare providing the incentive for leaf blowing and raking. Now that the leaves are accumulating it is time to consider composting. Leaves can provide wonderful organic matter for your soil. The first step is to gather the leaves.While raking is the easiest and quietest method for gather leaves,

Flowering Vines

One of the easiest ways to camoflage an unsightly feature or provide friendly privacy is to grow flowering vines. I think flowering vines are the most versatile for these types of applications but by all means can be grown just for their beauty.ClematisWhile I have other flowering vines both annual and perennials, I have to admit to liking clematis. They put on a showy display. I have two

First Snow of the Season

Trees and CloudsWe had our first snow flurries on October 12. At times the flurries were thick enough to cause whiteout conditions. In between the flurries, I shot this video clip of one of the trees near the vegetable garden. There were a few snow flakes but I don't think they showed well in the video clip.Video details: 21 seconds, taken by author October 12, 2006 using Cannon OPowershot

Sunflowers

Gardens need sunflowers not only for the simple beauty but for attracting beneficial pollinators. Both of these photos were taken last year. Since this year's growing season has closed I thought I would start sharing older photos.SunflowerI feed the birds and some of the mixture contains sunflower seeds. This is just regular, run of the mill sunflower seed or black oil sunflower seed. Each

The Start of Winterizing the Garden Beds

With the ADFF rapidly approaching we decided to start winterizing the raised garden beds Thursday before dinner. We already had plans to be away for the weekend so did not want the tomatoes to get hit by frost. In preparation, I did a final pick of the tomatoes including all the green tomatoes. We should have plenty of slicing tomatoes to last into mid Novemember.Tomato SnowmanOther than tomato