Jaci Dawn

This blog is supposed to be about my garden (sometimes), but I haven’t done much with my garden since July when I busted my ribs. The ribs have healed completely, but now the weather has changed and my life has changed and priorities have changed. Pretty much in that order.

And there’s this. This is new. This is a gopher or a mole that has invaded our yard.

This has been hunting the gopher. It can’t end well.

The gopher may live another day, but the back door may have taken a fatal blow.

I just love dogs.

This is my garden today. In between rain storms.

I don’t want to get all muddy and wet, so instead I took photos. I’ll contemplate the photos awhile and guilt myself into planning a day in the yard to work on everything that needs to be done before winter really sets in. I’m thinking sometime between now and Thanksgiving Day there will be a relatively dry Saturday or Sunday and I can get the shovel out.

I’ll divide irises, peonies, grape hyacinth and daylilies. I’ll dig out some of the Shasta daisies and the borage that took over my prayer garden. I’ll dead-head all the flowers that still need it: the asters, the nasturtiums, the hollyhocks, the peonies and the sunflowers. The chickadees have stripped the sunflowers of seeds. I’ll cut down the old canes on the black-cap raspberry and trim up the Oregon grape. And by that time, I will have filled the yard debris bin and topped off the compost pile.

Don has already cleaned out the vegetable garden. He’s mowed the front lawn for the last time this year and is waiting for a dry day to tackle the backyard one more time. Then we will both be done with gardening for 2009 and we’ll be looking forward to seed catalogs.