Not quite, but it sounded dramatic anyway!
It's mostly true though. Now that we are in a period again that it's dark before and after work, there's very little we could do in the garden during the week and most tasks have to wait till the weekend. True that we could always put artificial lights on, or at least carry a flashlight with us along the way but nothing substitutes the illumination bought about by natural daylight. I find judgment better and precision work easier with natural light rather than artificial ones, in the garden a least.
At the moment there is still a small window of opportunity to do some gardening after work with natural daylight still present. But only if I manage to get home on time, and even so I only really have a half an hour or so (an hour tops, if it's not gray and overcast as well) before the sun has truly set and night time has totally crept. And it looks like I'll only have this chance this week, come the weekend we move our clocks back again. We may (falsely) gain an hour extra over the weekend but that would also mean that it's definitely dark already when we get home from work.
But half an hour of productivity is better than having none at all so every evening (bar last night) I have carried on shifting some 'not so hardy' potted plants under cover and indoors to their usual homes for the winter. Little and often soon adds up and avoids a massive mad dash once the biting cold weather finally arrives (which I hope won't be too soon, and if ever, never prolonged).
And so it is, it is the time of the year again when the work shop starts to become lush with ferns...
I started to tidy the 'leafy' greenhouse last Sunday, ready to jam in more 'leafy' plants in it the following days. I started to run out of time this evening and it was fast getting too dark to do such a potentially delicate procedure so only managed bring in a few tonight. This was how dark it was just before I finished...
But of course flash photography helps! I'm sure it's better to see the plants illuminated.
Ta-dah! There's still lots of space left!
Succulents were the first to be tucked in under cover in the 'spiky' greenhouse, which I mostly did a couple of weekends ago, to give them a longer time to dry out. I've shoved in a few more last weekend and the only ones left outside are the ones that are either hardy (in our garden anyway), to go in the house, or bedding ones treated as annuals and waiting for the first frosts to end their pretty existence (or at least until I tidy them away myself.)
I don't always wait for the first frosts to remove summer beddings, sometimes I do it manually. I ensure I have back ups though, propagated last summer and tucked safely in the greenhouse.
A peek into the spiky greenhouse early in the evening. I wouldn't even try doing anything here in the dark, as you can imagine why.
Ta-dah! Flash photography comes to the rescue!
One things about succulents is that if you keep them on the dry side, with gentle heating as and when necessary, they remain pristine all year round. And pristine plants are a sight for sore eyes whilst leafy plants tend to look scruffy during the depths of winter.
So here we go, the long process of tucking the garden to sleep has well and truly begun. There was an initial forecast of cold weather arriving by the end of the week but that seems to have been lifted off now, or at least it won't be as cold as first predicted. Good as it buys as time. Slow, steady, and stress free, that's the way to go.Mark :-)
