A full weekend of gardening. Almost done for winter.

Taken today...it is pouring on the west coast.

We were blessed this weekend to have relatively nice weather. It was cool, and required a coat until I warmed up working, then just my heavy cotton shirt. Hair in a ponytail...good to go.
I know that technically it is not the right time to prune a rose bush. I was looking at the rose leaves that have fallen. Ugly. My one and ony rose bush had rust, mildew big time and black spot. It was a complete mess. The Perdita roses were kind of sad this year. That's how bad the bush was. So, I hacked it. I brought it right down below the leaf line. Ummm, maybe about a foot and a half tall. Then I raked up every leaf I could get. I picked them out of the nooks and crannies with my fingers. It was awesome.
I moved on to asters. I never catch them before they seed and I end up with tens of millions of baby asters in the spring. They had seed heads, but hopefully I caught them on time. If not they are really easy to hoe out in spring.

You can see the eight foot high rosebush is now about
one foot tall. Look at the beautiful leaf mulch.

Then the peony. It has had what looks like black spot for about 15 years. When I cut it back hard in fall I end up with a lot less spot and more flowers. With spot, the flowers just kind of wilt and never really bloom. I noticed that my small Sorbet Peony had some of the same spot on it. I cut them both to the ground and carefully raked up the leaves.
I took all of the flowers and seeds off the lavenders. I have spread them all over the yard for the bees next year. I know the seeds will be a bit of an issue, but I'm all over it!
Allan came out and put the bag on the lawn mower and mulched up leaves that lay in Lance and Judy's yard. They aren't using them this year. Yayyy. I put them in the compost bin and then thought, why don't I put them in the freshly winterized flower bed and let them rot over the winter. I have never fed the plants in any real way. I pulled the leaves out of the bin and spread them in the garden. I also put a layer over the rhubarb.
I stirred up the compost and watered liberally. Put up the front panel on the bin. Put them to bed.
I forgot my camera battery at the store...on the changer. So the pictures will be taken a couple days after this eight hour odyssey.