It's planting day! I always love Halloween. It's pensive and today isn't any different. It sprinkled a little this morning, a little overcast, a little heavy. A quiet day for the dead to be walking around. In celebration, I spent some time in my butterfly garden. I planted some anemones and the buddleja that I ordered from forest farm. The pot had three, so I pulled two out and am transplanting them to new pots.Hopefully they'll survive. I took them inside and Taki started to eat them. Lovely little cat. The other is in the ground, surrounded by mulch and doused with a heavy feeding of seaweed. I hope it gets established before winter officially sets in. I don't know if I'll get my rose in the ground before then at the pace I'm moving. The Texas sage I transplanted was looking a little sad, but it's flowering now. The city's heavy brush pickup took our bonfire that we spent the last few days getting together. Probably a good thing. You can see into the back back yard from the street now. There's still too much poison ivy, though. I like it as a concept, but after having infected myself multiple times now, I wonder if it truly is beneficial to our yard. And I planted an entire package of spinach. I don't know why. It was there? The bed had no earthworms at all, high acid content and absolutely no nutrients, so hopefully the compost, manure, feed and topsoil I piled on top will give the spinach something to eat. We'll see in eight-to-ten days. If not, then it will give the stink bugs a happy snack.

The bare side yard patch has been transformed. So far we've put in a meandering little path, planted a few this and that and already the neighbors are commenting. "Looks nice!" I pulled out more broken glass, got coated in poison ivy (again!) and found a penny (o joy!) Today I planted my first seeds scavenged from the pile of weirdness in the garage. Mostly out of season, but whatever. 1 Poppies Shirley, (thin to 10".) Planted with the ones from the 'green on 5/30 2 Chives (allium schoenoprasum) (thin to 6") 3 Blue Fescue (thin to 12" - cut back to 3-4" annually. Divide every 3 years) 4 Clasping Coneflower (oracopsis amplexicaulis) - (free from bank) 5 White Coneflower, purple coneflower (thin to 18") 6 Shasta Daisy (leftover from wedding packets) 7 Amaranth (Gimmee from TNG) Cat grass (avena sativa) 8 Cilantro & Thyme (thin to 1' apart) 9 Dwarf mixed lupins. Why do I have these? We'll see what comes up.