It's Not Just Cut and Slash.

11-7-08 VERMONT: I came up yesterday to finish closing the gardens for the winter. There have been a couple hard frosts, and most of the perennials are dormant. Since we left in mid-October there has been 3.9 inches of rain, the pond is full and draining. Fish, newts, frogs are still active. Today was warm enough to work outside in a T-shirt. I cut down all the dead shoots and stems from the beds behind the new house and raked it all up and carted it all to the compost area. The cuttings were quite wet and heavy.

This operation is not just cut and slash, one had to avoid cutting down the new little biennials, hollyhocks, foxglove, for example, that will be next years flowers, or perennials like primrose and hellebore that already have next years plants out waiting to bloom in the spring. Other perennials like peonies need to be cut to the ground because the stalks are usually infected with fungus.

If you wait until spring to do this, you damage the new shoots popping up. In the spring the snow pack melts back slowly exposing a little more of the beds each day, depending on sun exposure. The open parts of the beds get way ahead of the still snow covered parts making the clean up difficult. Some beds are way ahead of other beds making you spread the clean up over weeks, and making you go back to a particular bed several times as it opens up.

Early this morning, I was watching birds in the crab apple tree outside our bedroom window. The goldfinches were in their gray winter outfits and hanging out with the evening grosbeaks, as they often do. Doves were also in the tree. They were all eating the little apples. Robins are still around and are also big little apple eaters. One tree has been picked clean.


Two feral apple trees, one with yellow fruit and one with red.

When the leaves are down, vistas open up.