Well… the blogging ended abruptly. The flowers, however, kept on chugging along. Dahlias and Zinnias were still blooming well into the fall. I finally cut everything back in late October. Why did I stop blogging? I just couldn’t keep up. I have a new found respect for those bloggers and social media rockstars that consistently stay on top of everything without needing an army!

My husband sprung a home painting and room repurposing project on us in early September. It needed to be done, but it wasn’t something I was planning for exactly at that time. Of course, as always seems to be the rule with home projects, one thing leads to another. In addition to the room that was getting painted we had to include the hallway, and if I was going to do the hallway, I had to paint the front door. If I was going to paint the front door, we should get a new storm door, but before we do that, we should paint the outside trim around the door and all that also led to painting the backdoor and the trim around that. See what I mean…  September also always brings a much-needed beach trip with some of my closest and dearest friends, so that took me away from home for a week, and before I knew it, September was a blur of painting and memories. October brought fall days, a long weekend away with my daughter, and our killing frost, or what should have been the killing frost. More about that later.

Although I wasn’t journaling about the garden, in between everything going on, I was still visiting with my flowers regularly. Even as the growing season was coming to a close and one by one, I was cutting things back, it was still a beautiful space to pause a moment in my days and enjoy the show. The zinnias just would not quit. Cut and come again, you betcha! They were a perfect flower for the first year! In spite of me, they were magnificent until the end. The dahlias were continuing to bloom as well. Some suffered damage that could not be survived. I’ll post about that in the future, but those that did not see that type of damage, did keep budding and blooming as well. To be honest, overall, I was disappointed with the dahlias, they really didn’t do much until late fall, but there was also a combination of issues that I need to work through too to give them the best chance of success. Perhaps next season will be better for them.

I thought we were getting a killing frost around October 21st but, I don’t know that it was. Yes, there was some frost damage, but the blooms did not completely die off. Regardless, shortly after, I did cut back the dahlias and zinnias. Those were the only things left at that point and I dug up the dahlia tubers for storage. I removed the weed fabric, my husband mowed down the meadows, and we put the space to bed for a long winter’s nap.

The next few posts will be a review of what did well, what didn’t, what the pollinators loved, and the unexpected surprises. I’ll also talk about the plans for 2023!