fall clean-up

It's hard to believe it's October and time to put my garden to sleep for the winter. Fall clean-up has been a bit challenging this year. We've had many days of rain, and my days off from work have not always coincided with the nice weather. I finally had some great gardening days last week, despite the fact that I had to wear my winter coat.

Here are a few of my routine fall garden tasks:

• Remove any annuals that I don't want to re-seed. As you can see from the first photo, I removed dozens of marigolds. Not to worry, I still have dozens more blooming that keep my yard looking very autumn-ish. And yes, it's hard for me to pull these pretty annuals out of the ground, but it has to be done. There's only so much re-seeding I want to deal with next year.
• Transplanting - As all of you gardeners know, gardening is a trial and error experience, and I excel at trial and error. Consequently, there's always an ongoing transplant list waiting for me.
  
• Replace/re-do any rock borders that have cracked or fallen apart in our landscape, or re-situate the rocks where the moles have made them heave. Dang moles!
• Complete a thorough weeding of all my flower beds. I am always thankful I did this when spring arrives.
• Trim all the plants around the perimeter of our home to make sure no mice or rabbits decide to take up residence over the winter.
  
• Place a tomato cage over each one of my daylilies to protect them from getting trampled by the herds of deer that frequent our yard. The deer can do a lot of damage and the tomato cages really do help, especially with the new transplants.
• And finally, cleanup all of my garden tools and storage cabinet.