Fall

I can't believe that I haven't posted anything for over 2 weeks. The time just flies. This month has gone so fast. We've been busy in the yard getting it ready for winter. October is always a busy month for us. The garden needs to be torn down. That is always a lot of work and takes much time. Then we start cutting down all the dead willows and collect the fallen branches. Willows are not the best trees to have. The branches are really brittle and they break off with every storm. I had to clean the yard twice within a couple of weeks. We had two huge mounts of branches piled up in the garden, the only place where we can burn. Then we have to wait for a windless day, and, ideally, also for a wet morning, because of the burning leaves that will rise into the air and settle down in the grass. If the grass is too dry it may catch fire. It is a race every year. First, the garden needs to be void of all the plants, like tomatoes, peppers, lettuce etc. As soon as that is done we can start piling the branches onto the garden. We were quite lucky this year. We were able to burn the branches the next day after we piled them up. I did that at seven o'clock in the morning when the dew was still on the grass. We had a nice bonfire. It burnt so fast I could barely keep up with throwing the second pile onto the burning branches. It was all over within one hour. Then it is just the ashes. They usually smolder for a couple of days. But this year it rained the next day and that was okay.

After the burning I till the garden. But before that I collected about 16 bags of leaves from the yard and I tilled them into the soil. The leaves make great fertilizer and they are free.

Well, it's all done now and it is time to relax for a bit. But there are plenty of other things still to do, like putting up Christmas lites, getting the snowblower ready for the first big snowfall, and storing away all the summer stuff. It never ends.