Sunday afternoon, after attending Isaac's soccer match, we met up at Jill's house to carve our pumpkins.
Killing pumpkins.
I got mine done fast, a traditional Jack-o-lantern with no fancy cuts. Everybody else had more creative ideas.
Meanwhile we listened to/watched the last quarter of the Seahawks v Texans game. With a minute and a half left, the Hawks passed and ran and passed again for a touchdown! When Richard Sherman then intercepted a Huston pass, the game was ended in a Seahawks victory formation.
And the carving went on. Jan had joined us for the afternoon, and observed the artistry.
Irene is carving Pusheen, her favorite online cartoon cat.
Tom used the stem as a proboscis for his misshapen pumpkin.
Jill's Jack-o-lantern is green.
The kids labored long on their creations.
Isaac used the stem end, too, for his cool looking creation.
Irene's Pusheen.
Linda and Jill's Jacks.
Tom and Isaac's non-traditional gorgeous gourds.
Happy Halloween!
My garden blogging friend Peter, The Outlaw Gardener, participates in a meme called "In a Vase on Monday". He always comes up with the most wonderful arrangements, staged beautifully with props, all from his garden and collections.
I always have some kind of arrangement on my kitchen table. Since most of the flowers are now gone from my garden, I am now looking for foliage and berries, anything to add a little color.
Here's what I have on my table this Monday.
Some golden fever few blooms, spikes of lightly lavender purple plectranthus, golden euonymus, orange cotoneaster berries, and a branch of bright purple beauty berry.
All contained in my go-to green and yellow jug, found in a little antique shop, and my newest glass pumpkin, from the Glass Eye sidewalk sale.
And of course the green glass salt and pepper shakers. It is the kitchen table where we eat all of our meals, after all.
We are having the most glorious autumn weather. Friday we decided to take advantage of it to go play in a beautiful place. Instead of working in our own garden, we visited Kuboda Garden, a treasure that was once a private Japanese garden and arboretum, and now is a Seattle City park.
I took lots of photos, so I am going to post them in batches this week, as we slide from October into November.
Here we go, through the gate.
There are choices to be made as to which path to take. We started out on one less traveled.
Embrace the beauty of autumn. It is so fleeting.
I'm starting with a pretty photo of our backyard trees because that's what shows up when I link to Facebook.
With the sun shining, Monday was a work day. We started with our 3.35 mile walk, and then got busy in the yard. It was time to plant the tulips we had ordered from the Skagit Valley Blub Growers.
This is how I look when I am playing in the dirt. When we are into projects, we don't even wash our gardening clothes every day.
My job is to make the tags, sort the bulbs and get them into the nursery cans.
Tom puts a layer of garden soil in each can, and then fills them up after I put the bulbs in.
When the bulbs are all potted up, we prepare the display bed on top of the wall. The dahlias that were here for the summer have previously been dug and stored.
Tom dug a trench, I placed the cans, and then we worked together to sink them further into the ground, before covering them up.
When I wasn't working on the planting, I was cleaning up the lawn, now that the first Autumnal wind and rain storms have passed.
Tom moved on to the raised beds, where he removed the last of the annuals.
These bulbs were ready for planting in other places the next day. We were tired.
Tuesday we didn't wake up until 9:00! So we skipped our walk and got going outside about 11:00, after a leisurely breakfast. The sun was lighting up the maple and this was our view from the kitchen window.
I spent several hours cleaning out the rose bed and another border, and then placed the bulb cans for planting.
While I planted, Tom got the lawn mowed, sucking up what was left of the cedar and fir needles.
I was tired by the time I got all of the planting done, what with all of the digging and the ups and downs, so I just walked around with a camera to enjoy the yard a bit before going in to rest before cooking dinner.
Tom got two more of the raised beds dug and covered for the winter.
The bulbs are in their beds.
Today, Wednesday, the clouds moved in, and we had a few sprinkles. We went for our walk and I got my exercises done, then we drove to the clinic to get out flu shots.
I spent the rest of the day grocery shopping at Safeway and Costco and getting everything put away.
Tom set up his hoop house over one of the garden boxes, and began to move in his bonsai trees. I think he collected pots from around the yard to put in the greenhouse too.
4:00 is usually quitting time around here. I was done with my jobs, and found Tom here. He said he was waiting for the leaves to fall off before he put several of his bonsai in the hoop house. He decided he could leave the trees here and come inside to wait.
Tomorrow will be another work day.