What I haven't yet done

This mild autumn is helping me to procrastinate, so I thought I'd remind myself of the things that I have not yet done that I need to pretty soon. Our first hard freeze is coming this weekend, and that means that I really do need to get moving.

1) Dig up the tropicals. This means two dozen Elephant Ears (Colocasia), a few papyrus, some cannas, and at least one non-hardy banana.

***

2) Fix the pond liner holes.

I just need to move the edge on that one side a little and that will allow the water level to raise a couple of inches. Probably not top of the priority list, and the leaf netting is in the way right now anyway.


3) Rhizome prune the bamboos.

I'm not sure why I keep putting this off, but I expect that I'll have a lot of shoots coming up in unwanted places in the spring, making much more work then.


4) Finish the veggie bed fence.

Why am I listing things first that have no real relation to temperatures? I can do this almost any time before spring planting, as the kale themselves are fairly well protected, and that's the only thing of importance growing in there right now.


5) Empty my pots.

This is important to do before things get too cold, as I don't want the soil to expand and crack the pots. True that many of these are "frost-proof" and that I have kept some pots outdoors through the winter for years with no problems.


6) Bring in the rest of the potted succulents.

The ones that can handle 25ºF (-4ºC) have been fine out there so far, but even those will need to come inside now.


7) Get more fluorescent light bulbs and organize plants for the winter.

(I'm not going to post a photo of a dead fluorescent bulb! Here's one if you really want to see it.)

I'm not quite prepared to bring in a dozen more pots. Where will they go?


8) Finish cleaning and organizing the garage.

There are a few more big pots to bring inside here, and I'm not sure where they'll go right now. I've been slowly working on this, but I need to step it up a bit now. I'm almost certain I'll need to rent a storage unit this year in order to make more room...


9) Take cuttings of tender plants to root indoors over winter.

This includes my yearly purple fountain grass efforts. Not quite cuttings, but close.


Before I get to double digits, I'm going to change gears and end on a more positive note: things that I have been doing lately...

Too late, I thought of another one...

10) Plant my Allium bulbs!

With no freeze to kill the annuals and trash the perennial foliage, it's not easy to plant the bulbs. Now with two days of rain I'll have to wait a little longer. I've even picked up some more on clearance at Lowe's, so made more work for myself.


Okay, on to the positive: what I have been doing...

A) Building more furniture.

B) Blogging about it on my other blog: Cut, Join, Finish

Please follow me there if you like to see more details about the creative projects I work on. It's been a while since I posted last, but there are several more projects that will be finishing up soon, and my goal is to post once a week or so.


C) Switching clunkily between my two Instagram accounts: inwig (for garden-related stuff) and NimbleMill (for my furniture work). Won't you please follow me on both?

Why is this so difficult Instagram? Let me switch between multiple accounts!


Wait, I thought I was supposed to end on a positive note?

.