WAITING FOR WINTER

The garden is at rest except for the remaining carrots and the parsnips for next spring. Tomorrow morning I add one more pickup of horse manure. That should insure a good crop in 2013.

While some of these grapes look edible, most are not. During the middle of the season, a virus called anthracnose attacked my grapes. I will need to clean up all of the leaves and vines this fall, and then in spring, spray a lime/sulpher mixture as a prophylactic. Most of the grapes are infected, but a few are OK. I enjoy them when I'm walking in or nearby my vineyard.

Goldenrod is delicate and beautiful when it goes to seed. Next years crop sits at the tip of the stems.

Even the pond seems at rest and ready for winter. This year, the pond lost almost three feet of water. I expect that during the winter months, provided we have snow, it will be replenished. The brown "leaved" trees are tamarack which lose their needles every fall.

Blackberries in the summer are dark green, but in fall they turn a beautiful red. I'm hoping that these are storing up energy to give a bountiful crop of berries in the summer of 2013.

Mums are so beautiful in the fall. I bought several like this back in May from Shopko at 79 cents each. As small plants, they had bloomed and the shop people had trimmed their buds off. They recovered, expanded, and now, they bloom profusely.

The last clematis flower of the year. It may be the most beautiful of all that we've seen. Soon it will give way to the cold and freezing weather.

You'd think that these are ready for use, but "no," they're only for decoration. I have a pair like this in the garage should the snow get really, really deep.

HAPPY 70TH BIRTHDAY, ROB. BLESSINGS ON YOUR NEW DECADE!!!!!