My bit of gardening in November has been completed with the filling of the large pots with greenery from Nature. That does count as gardening doesn’t it?
I started filling the big pots many years ago when it wasn’t the popular thing to do and you can see some of the previous years containers here. But since then the idea has caught on and grown and a lot of stores sell ready made pots if you don’t want to fill your own.
I get my greenery from different places … the gardens, the road sides, on walks, and this year I added a new place … the landfill site. We have one fairly close to us and we bag leaves, trimmings etc and take them there to dump. I started taking my garden trimmers this year as folks dump the cuttings from their evergreens and it was an opportunity to get trimmings from shrubs that we don’t have.
I like to fill the pots early enough so that the soil isn’t frozen. Many people include shiny ornaments and bows but I don’t because these containers aren’t just for Christmas but for all winter long. If I added the Christmasy items I’d never get them out of the pots till next spring and I really don’t like seeing decorations up past their time.
Some of the birch logs came from last December’s ice storm that brought down a lot of branches. The big pot is by the number rock I made a few years ago and is visible from the road. Mr. Fix it also made a feeder from part of the log.
The first ones I do are 2 iron containers either side of the garage door. The addition of red dogwood branches red sumac plumes and wild feathers give the pots more texture and a bit of colour.
I got the pots filled just in time this year as about a week later the deep freeze set in and the soil was rock hard. I had actually got a few more branches on the last trip to the landfill but couldn’t push them into the soil. Maybe after this mild weekend I’ll be able to add them.
And then along came an unexpected snow storm that covered the pots in snow. The cold snowy weather lasted about a week.
This weekend the temperatures are on the rise again and rain is in the forecast. The snow has vanished from the greenery and soon they will be glistening in rain drops.
Such unusual weather for November. Our area was lucky and we only got about 6 cm of snow but other parts of Ontario, to the south west and the north, got much more. Areas in the USA really got dumped on.
I’m sharing with Mosaic Monday. Be sure to visit Judith’s site and see all the lovely mosaic/collage images created by others.
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