Help! My garden needs to be put to bed

Really, really, REALLY have got to find time to get in the garden and clean it up for winter.

Preparing the garden for winter

One last shot of the garden (looking west) on Monday, Oct. 15, before the big cleanup.

The remains of the garden (looking east) after all the dead plants — and some weeds — were pulled Tuesday, Oct. 16.

Tomato cages and plants pulled out, all that’s left was rotten tomatoes by the end of Tuesday, Oct. 16.

The freshly tilled garden Wednesday, Oct. 17. In the middle is the pile of dead plants and weeds that I’ll burn at some point.

Plant crocus bulbs. Check.

Put away tomato cages and garden stones. Check.

Pull out dried-up tomatoes, marigolds, beans and other spent plants. Check.

Till garden. Check.

It’s been a busy couple days for this booyah gardener. In the past, fall garden work has mostly meant finding time on weekends to rip out the dried-up plants and throw the cages in the garden shack. This year though, I actually planned ahead a bit, took a week of vacation from my paying job in hopes the weather would cooperate and I’d be able to spend more time cleaning up the garden before winter.

A soggy but successful Sunday

Extremely yucky morning. Rainy and windy. Generally nasty. Especially if the plan is to watch your daughter play soccer. But I can’t complain about the rain because we need it and have to take it when it comes these days. So here I am. Sitting in the car waiting for soccer to begin and catching up with Garden Booyah.

Bulbs ordered for my new flower garden — I hope!

So I’ve been slacking this past week. Meant to get all my bulbs ordered, but I had problems with two separate websites. When I called one of the companies, I was told there were problems with the Internet ordering system and was asked to try back another day. The other company’s sale ended that day, so I resorted to good old snail mail.

I’m curious to find out whether they’ ll honor the sale. I did get envelope postmarked by the sale’s end date after all.

I’ve never ordered bulbs via a company’s website (hell, I’ve never ordered bulbs!), so I don’t have any experience as to whether the Internet ordering issues are common. I order plenty other stuff via online (including the new iPad I’m writing this post with), and 99 percent of my experiences have been good.

Anyway, about the actual bulbs. I spread out my catalogs on the floor and started placing cut-out photos of the ones I thought would work on a dry-erase board. I tried to pick a variety of colors and types (Helenium Red Jewel, above) that would bloom at various points of the spring/summer/fall in order to have color all season long. I tried to figure in flowers of a descending height from back to front of the space, too.