My Flowers Are About To Freeze!

What’s with this New England weather? You can tell fall is coming fast. Day temps are still in the 70’s, but last night it went down to near freezing. I’m sitting here in my sweats and heavy winter slippers! Its 50 degrees outside and I have my front door open. It’s actually warmer outside than it is inside!

I’m watching the garden. I have these two plants, one a Mandabeeea? in the backyard. It’s tall and viney and gorgeous with these lovely red blossoms all over it. Looks fabu. My sister in CA bought it this summer. One of these nights it’s going to freeze on the vine and die…. so that’s a task to roll it inside… (thank goodness she left it in a pot.) The second plant is a spectacular big red blossom thingy my second sister purchased to replace the pathetic and dying impatiens I had stuck in the front porch container. It still looks strong, but one of these nights the temp is sure to go to the below 36 degree mark and, sigh, autumn will certainly have arrived. I’ll look out the front door and there will be this frozen mass of ugly leaves withering away. I think she told me I can take it inside or put it in a dark quiet place for the winter… I will have to look it up.

In the meantime, I have to figure out what I’m going to do with all the leaves that are going to fall. I will have to start lawn mower mulching mulching mulching soon or they will get ahead of me. Last year I tossed most of them over the back fence… but we have new neighbors now and they would frown if I tossed dead leaves onto their new lawn.

Can’t burn ’em, I tried that and a local boy scout told me in no uncertain terms that was against the law. And I don’t want to bag ’em… I’ll be going to the dump with dozens of bags. So mulch mulch mulch is the best I can come up with.

What do you do as the temps drop, the flowers freeze and the fall leaves begin to fall?