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Breath of life rose bud and rain drops

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Wordless Wednesday

Breath of Life rose bud

Rain drops and Rose buds. Two of my favorite things.

My roses have finally stopped blooming what with all the snow and freezing temperatures that we’ve been having here in Toronto. It’s about time … but I’ll miss them over the next few months.

Sometime this week I’ll have to take my camera outside and take some photos of frosty plants. Even though the plants are wilting due to the cold they can still look pretty neat when covered with snow, frost or ice.

Yes I know this Wordless Wednesday post is late, again! I got mixed up as to what day it was – again. I’m so tired lately thanks to our new puppy and my Crohns. sigh …






The garden is beginning to shut down

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It feels like it’s gotten so cold outside! I think that’s only partly true though. I’m sick again with fever and sore stomach so I’m just freezing, even inside my own home!

Looking outside at the garden that I don’t dare walk in when I’m feeling this cold indoors I can see that the leaves from the big maple tree have begun to fall over the lawn and garden, and some of my plants have started to die down.

Those that are shutting down for the winter include the balloon flowers and the Phlox. As I mentioned in earlier posts many of my flowers are still going strong, although I suspect they won’t be for much longer!

We still haven’t had any frost … or at least I don’t think we have, certainly we haven’t had any hard frosts, but I expect within the next week we’ll have our first. That might be the only thing that shuts down my roses! I swear they want to keep blooming and blooming. Silly plants!

Some of my visitors have mentioned in comments that their gardens have been hit by frost already. How is everyone else’s garden fairing this first week of November?

Time to bring the tropical plants indoors!

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It’s cooled down here in Toronto quite a bit over the last week. In fact, some night’s have started to get close to freezing temperatures.

So, I think I’m going to bring all my tropical plants indoors again. I did put all the tropicals like the passionflower vines, the jasmine, ornamental peppers and so on inside the enclosed back porch a couple of weeks ago. We even put two tomato plants that had been growing in large pots inside the porch too.

The plants have all done well in there and the tomatoes have really taken off and have produced a number of green tomatoes. Most are large enough to begin ripening and as far as I’m concerned that’s just in time as the porch will be too cool soon for the tomatoes to survive.

I think that I’ll bring the tropical plants inside and place them in our sunny spare bedroom upstairs.

I do this every year, but I’ve found that not all of the plants make it through the winter. We have a humidifier that we use upstairs in the winter time, but I think that the plants find the air too dry even with the extra humidity we try to put in the air.

Perhaps we’ll get another humidifier or vaporizer to put right in the room with the plants. That will certainly increase the total humidity upstairs!

They have to combat dry winter furnace heated air and the occasional white fly or other pesty bug attack. I do give the plants a spray with a mild soapy water solution occasionally.

Anyone have any other tips for me as to how I can make sure my passion flower vines and other tropicals make it through the winter inside the house?

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