In my quest to find colossal ways to waste my valuable time…every fall I dig up all my dhalias to store for the winter. After frost has blackened the foliage,( which by the way has only happened to a few so far, Jack ole buddy where are you?) I dig up the tubers and roots shake off any loose soil and lay them on my deck to dry in the sun for a few days. Then I give them a better cleaning once the dirt has dried and falls off more easily, and pack them in either peat moss or vermiculite .After that I try in a ridiculous fashion to find a suitable place in this airtight overly insulated house with finished cellar. My parents had a dirt cellar in their first house , and an actual honest to goodness root cellar in their second.Those would have been perfect . We have a carpeted heated man-cave and work out room which never dips below 60. The garage, although insulated ,still gets way too cold. In a spectacular failure last year I listened to a garden speaker who said she just leaves hers in containers which she places in her unheated garage for the winter and Viola! in spring they get put back outside to start to grow again. Well, guess what? mine were rotted disgusting wet mush in the spring, thank you very much! So they went where ALL my dhalias go, the great compost pile in the sky. As you can see from photo, year after year of nothing but dried or rotted tubers has done nothing to dampen my enthusiasm for trying to store and re-plant my dhalias. What is that definition of insanity?….do the same thing over and over again expecting to somehow get a different result?……well ok…… point taken.
Moving on to fall, or the lack thereof….many of my plants and I , as well as a few grasshoppers so the story goes, are harboring the delusion that winter may never come. Although the trees seem to get it and their foliage is stunning, my daylilys have fresh strappy green leaves , the hosta although a little fried from a September night, are all still solid not translucent and melting away into the soil. How the heck I am supposed to clean up the garden like this??? Cutting down all this lively foliage is work work work and I am not a fan. I know I could leave it until later, but then it’s soooo cold( piss moan piss moan). I refuse to leave it until spring because it gives the rabbits great cover as they decimmate the evergreen stuff, ain’t happenin’. While I think on the dilema, please feel free to enjoy some stellar (humor me) photographs taken at the peak of fall color here in the Burrow.
