CANADIAN REGION - What are you doing October, November and December 2015

A neighbour's tree in Fall colours as photographed from a second floor window in our house.

Ooooo...purdy. What kind is it, do you know?
CC

CC ... most likely a Maple Tree

A few more days, especially windy days, and those trees will be stripped. then no more leaves until next year.

Still gathering leaves, and I did not need to put up a notice.  Just hoping the winds die down so that I can get them shredded without them blowing away, and then put on the garden as mulch for the winter.

I have some chard almost ready to harvest leaves and the carrots are coming along nicely.

Temps overnight in Ottawa ... tonight -4C (25F) and then -7C (19F). Winter is fast approaching and I still have to clean up my SFG boxes and regular gardens.

trolleydriver wrote:Temps overnight in Ottawa ... tonight -4C (25F) and then -7C (19F). Winter is fast approaching and I still have to clean up my SFG boxes and regular gardens.

In BC Southern Interior down to 8C then 5C by Thursday. I doubt there are many people who are 100% prepared for Winter.

Kelejan wrote:

trolleydriver wrote:Temps overnight in Ottawa ... tonight -4C (25F) and then -7C (19F). Winter is fast approaching and I still have to clean up my SFG boxes and regular gardens.

In BC Southern Interior down to 8C (46F) then 5C (41F) by Thursday. I doubt there are many people who are 100% prepared for Winter.

Finally got the last of my daffodils and baby tulips planted. and covered with shredded leaves.

I collected about forty bags of leaves, but I found it much harder work collecting them from around my neighbourhood instead of collecting my own leaves from my own trees as in the past.

Still have to shred the majority of them but now have to wait for either the wind to drop or the the rain to stop.

The blueberries need more compost.  Shrubs still need some pruning.  Still waiting for more wood chips but I think I have had it for this year. 

I think I will go and watch some of the results of our general election. It seems that they can predict the result of the country's vote  from one box out of over two hundred in one venue.

I, also, will have to gather leaves from the neighborhood after removing our Chinese Pistachio tree. I think I will also plant some daffodils in a small bare BTE area in the front yard. It's been a few years since I had any.

Today we are having our furnace and air conditioner replaced. Luckily it's a rather mild day outside compared to the past couple of really cold days so we should be staying warm while the furnace is turned off. The only problem is the cost ... I may have to come out of retirement and get a job to pay for this new system!!! Of course the government is getting its pound of flesh with sales tax of over $1000 on this purchase.

Following yesterday's general election here in Canada we are getting a change in government from Conservative to Liberal after almost ten years of Conservative rule. Should be interesting days ahead. The new Prime Minister has promised to legalize marijuana as one of his key platform policies. Is there an opportunity in this for SFG or even microgreens (I'm kidding of course)?

Actually it's no joke.  Here in the states, some Kentucky legislators(not exactly a liberal bastion there either) are pushing hard to replace tobacco farming, whose profits have dramatically declined, with hemp farming.  Here in Oregon, personal use marijuana has been decriminalized ... I don't know the exact extent, but you can grow three or four of your own plants now. Weed shops have been opening across California for years now as their laws have changed, and local communities are setting up smoke shops in many places where the anti-weed legislation has started to ease up.

There may be a lot of money taken out of the hands of organized crime.  I'm hoping so.

Hemp is a plant that has been demonised.  Used to be rope was made of hemp as also many other things. I believe it is also good for the soil.

I also remember that my foster-mom's canary had hemp included in its seed trays and he did not get stoned. She also always called her canaries by the name of Joey, and I am sure she believed it was the same bird she had for about twenty years.

The hemp they are talking about has just a small fraction of the THC that makes a person stoned -- impossible to get stoned on.

The show I saw had a Kentucky law enforcer on it saying he was against growing hemp because it was indistinguishable by sight to his officers.

Okay. Maybe there are better ways to spend our money than trying to figure that out and make international crime syndicates more powerful, but oh well.

"Bing" for photos of growing hemp vs marijuana.  The hemp looks more like sugar cane or bamboo trying to be MJ.  Very tall and thin.  MJ is usually in a container and has a guard dog chained to it.

Today is the last day that there will be door-to-door mail delivery in my neighbourhood. Canada Post has converted us over to community mailboxes like this (the three multiboxes):

http://tinyurl.com/plgbknl

Yep, Current trend of mail boxes. Our neighborhood has them.

I was all set to gather more leaves and do a major shred, but the wind has been really strong today and the leaves that I was going to collect from down the road all blew away.

I am sure my neighbour will think I did a great job on her lawn.   I had been leaving them to build up so that I would have an easier job collecting about three bags, so sometimes it is good to procrastinate a bit.  I have plenty of other leaves I can collect when I feel like it.  Only trouble now is that it is forecast to rain tomorrow.

We do not have any big deciduous trees but my neighbour does so I have been collecting leaves from her property. I put them in a garbage pail and then shred them with a weed wacker/trimmer. I got that idea from someone on the SFG forums ... maybe it was jimmy cee.

I find it easier to run my lawn mower over them.  Last week I shredded 13 bags into seven.
I have about 20 more to do when the weather is right; no wind and/or no rain.  If the worst comes to the worst, I will leave them in the bags over winter, or put some of them in a corral. they will eventually get used, but the main thing is that they are there.

Kelejan wrote:
I am sure my neighbour will think I did a great job on her lawn.   I had been leaving them to build up so that I would have an easier job collecting about three bags, so sometimes it is good to procrastinate a bit. 

I agree on waiting a bit. I mowed up some leaves yesterday, to start my new compost pile, but put the mower at 4" high as I didn't want much grass mixed in yet. I'll wait til the lawn is completely covered with leaves and then lower the mower and take up the grass with them.

CC

Today

Sunrise:7:30Sunset:17:39
Nearly down to our Ten Hour Light Window here in BC Southern Interior.   Ten hours and nine minutes.

What's the name of the children's story? Goodnight Moon?? Well, this is the season of Goodnight Sun, where the earth and it's wonders take a long winter nap, resting up for the glorious burst of spring. Kind of sad but kind of, well, miraculous.

sanderson, I have never heard of that story, "Goodnight Moon", probably was not around when I was little.  But is is wonderful how the earth goes to sleep in different parts of the world and then wakes up after a hard winter and all our plants survive and flourish in spite of us.

I see on TV that the remains of "Patricia" is soaking Toronto and other parts east.  Stay dry, fellow Canadians, if you can. Just think of it as sharing with all our friends down South, they got the worst of it. Just glad that Mexico was not hit as badly as forecast.

Today we have a rain-free day and no wind so I am taking advantage of leaf shredding and covering some more of my beds in the absence of the wood chips that never arrived.. So far I have shredded ten bags of a mixture of Oak, Birch, and a couple of ornamental trees and covered two SFG beds containing garlic and tulip bulbs, and battened them down with tree branches before the leaves blow away.  A week of rain forecast so I am hoping the leaves stay in place.

I am taking a coffee break now, then out to work on another twenty bags and I know that I will not get through them all today.

A neighbour just walked by with her dog and informed that there was snow on the mountains. I will have to check if she means  the near mountains, or the further away higher ones.  The nearer ones are ones I use in the spring to gauge when I plant my tender crops such as tomatoes.  If the further mountains, then I still have some time to garden.

It has been raining here since last night, and total accumulation to now is 1.4" (3.6cm) and will get a bit more rain tonight before it moves out of the area. We did need rain but I think the farmers wanted to get the crops off before the deluge. Oh well, that's Mother Nature for ya.