Superhuman? Maybe not

Lee and I collected a lot of leaves from our neighbours (with permission) on the day before the city's designated leaf and yard waste collection at the beginning of November. I never did count how many bags, but I'm guessing it was well over sixty.

The next day, I took the dog for a big morning walk, and went out after lunch to put the garden to bed. It seemed a daunting task -- moving those bags of leaves around, loosening up soil in our garden boxes, and then covering the boxes. 

Bare soil is dying soil, or so say many soil scientists -- beneficial microbes, worms, and insects that help rejuvenate dirt and create compost need protection through our harshest seasons -- and the rest of the year, too. That's why my yard has leaf litter covering the soil all year long. It can look a bit messy, especially in the spring before the plants fill out, but it's better for them overall and I don't have to water as much when it's hot.

Here's the yard after two hours of work. See the beds against the back fences covered in leaves? 

It's kinda hard to tell, 
but that's probably 250 sq feet of soil work and coverage.

I used some leaf bags to fill our leaf corral to the brim, 

and stored a dozen others for next year's composting.
Two hours and another 250 sq feet later, it looked like this:

I ran out of steam when it came to packing leaves around my front yard rose bushes, but figured it was okay to leave that job for the next day. When Lee got home from work that evening, he was surprised at how much I'd accomplished, and I teased him that he has a superhuman wife. 

Of course, that evening I had to take ibuprofen. Somehow I don't think superhumans have such sore muscles after an afternoon of heavy yard work, but I'm not as young as I used to be. 

When it snowed three days later (more snow than what you see below as I took this picture after it started melting on Saturday), I was happy that the garden was tucked in for the season. We'll start all over again in the spring, hopefully with happy, healthy, and moist soil. Time to enjoy more indoor pursuits in place of gardening!

All tucked in

Growth and diminishment in the cycle of the seasons never ceases to amaze me. I notice it especially in the garden, where just a few days can make a huge difference. 

Now that we have reached the end of this gardening year, I am looking back on things and beginning to think about next year, though I won't get into serious planning until the seed catalogue arrives on the coldest day of January (how does it always manage to do that?) I learned a few things this year... that it's okay to pick barely pink strawberries if I don't want the slugs to get them first, that it's important to tie up Ralph's zucchinili squash or it curls up on the ground and can be mistaken for a snake, that pumpkins work better in full sun, and that I should probably plant half the climbing beans I did last May.

I thought it would be fun to post pictures of our raised bed vegetable garden as it progressed in 2020. 

June 3 -- planting is complete, just as it starts to rain!

June 9 -- warmth and growth

Week of July 12 -- I'm walking around every day,

marveling at how quickly things change.

It seems like those fava beans grew 5 cm overnight!

Didn't take any pictures in August!

September 7 -- Harvest has begun, 

but the everbearing strawberries keep going 

until first frost

September 18 -- Garlic, onions and beans are out,

but there's still a long way to go before snow -- 

thank goodness for my partner,

who wades in when I start to feel overwhelmed!

September 28 -- spreading and shoveling compost into the beds

October 20 -- Snow arrives... 

before I get all the leaves shoveled into the soil!

November 2 -- Thank goodness it doesn't last. 

A few warm days and Lee's help saw the leaves dug in 

and the beds re-covered with more leaves.

Bare soil is dying soil, and fall garlic needs protection

so it comes up in the spring -- 

a lesson I once learned the hard way!

It's been a week now since the snow arrived, and it looks like it's here to stay. But I don't mind -- harvest is in our freezer, our soil is all tucked in under an abundance of autumn leaves and white moisture, and the leaf bin is full for next year's composting and mulching efforts (thanks to the donations of several neighbours).

After a busy season of growth and diminishment, it's time for soil and soul to rejuvenate. 

Closing down the greenhouse

It's time. The greenhouse requires a running heater to keep our last few fruiting tomato plants from freezing at nights and on cloudy days, so we've finally closed it down and brought the freeze-ables indoors. And I have to say I kinda like having them in our dining room window. Green foliage on grey days gives me a lift. But at the same time, I'm looking forward to February and the greenhouse re-opening!

All tucked in... gardening like God does, part II

Last week our meteorologist reported that we were in for an evening of "wintery mix" weather, so I roused myself and one of my daughters from early hibernation, and we went out to put the front yard to bed. The back yard and vegetable plots have been settled in for their long winter's nap for a while, but the front yard, like the child who never wants to go to sleep, needed a little more attention. It was just a matter of raking the last of the leaves and tucking them in around the perennials so that no earth showed. A little tricky with my vertigo-spinny head... I had to be careful not to rake myself into the leaf piles!

I've learned a lot about gardening in the eight years we've lived here, mostly through what other people would call laziness, or maybe even mistaken thinking. But the practice of letting the leaves fall as they may -- like God does -- and leaving them in the border beds in my back yard -- because I had too much yard work to do everywhere else -- showed me that the beds with ordinary leaf mulch did much better than the beds without. I used to be one of those people who liked to see the dirt around my plants... but now I see that there certainly aren't as many weeds in the leaf-mulched beds as in the ones I kept raked, and the plants grow better because they don't dry out so quickly and have a bit of natural compost -- also known as fertilizer -- with them at all times.

So when you walk past my front yard, you may think that I'm a lazy gardener... but the fact of the matter is that it took more effort to put the garden to bed with leaf mulch than it does to rake it all out. I raked those leaves together more often this year than I ever have... put that front yard to bed three times, and then the wind -- petulant child! -- came and undid everything! But this weekend, we got a bit of that wintery mix to stick those leaves to the soil, and hopefully, they'll stay put as part of the lasagna gardening technique I hope to employ out there on a more permanent basis. Next spring, those leaves will keep moisture in the earth and enrich it as they break down over a shorter time period than wood chips or commercial mulch. And guess what? Next fall, God and the trees will give me another layer of free, natural mulch!