November Garden Clean Up

I spent yesterday afternoon working in my garden.

Birch 'Crimson Frost'

Not a monumental revelation, I suppose, except that it was November 4.

I mowed sugar maple leaves and they literally disappeared uncovering the deep lush green lawn beneath. I mowed my perennial bed, cutting in and around shrubs. I mowed the strawberry bed. I mowed the daylilies that have much too much evergreen daylily in their genetic make-up. I mowed the hosta bed under the huge white pine which is nearly done dropping its golden needles, at least for now.

I dug out the treacherously thorny blackberry with a root ball of the dimensions of my forearm. I doubt I "got it all". It is like a cancer invading the kinder, gentler raspberries.

I removed stems and stalks. Leaves continue to fall. I see the structural bones of my garden formed by plants. I debate removing the Lapin cherry which has provided little fruit so far and which has a trunk oozing its life blood.

I trimmed my front privet hedge, just the stray late growth, with its leaves dropping as I merely brush against it.

It seems I am doing my spring work and late winter pruning in one pass. I saw the first Christmas lights go up in the village. I find it hard to resolve that with the greenness of my lawn. Lawn mowers are the most frequent background noise these short days of early winter.

European larch 'Varied Direction'

Rhododendron PJM

Birch leaf on some potted sedums, pine needles extra...

I think less than 16 weeks until spring, in a place where winter can hang on seven months regardless of what the calendar says. A place where in the last 14 years I have recorded the ground freezing solid every year but one between Thanksgiving and the first of December.

The neighbor across the street is still bringing it, note the beautiful mum blooming behind the calamagrostis.
The yellow leaves of the rugosa roses out front are nice, too.

Typical view of my garden in November-- through a window.

Mowed lawn and border beds

I'd like to prune the smokebush, but the leaves do not act like they intend to fall anytime soon.
If there is a possibility there still performing photosynthesis and storing sugars in the roots,
I'll pass on pruning this for a while.

I think I saw a mosquito.