When would you winter protect the roses? I don't want to do it too soon, any ideas? Thanks!

Yep, I got the pesto made this weekend, pulled and froze the rest of the basil (plants got huge this year for some reason) and moved the bay tree up onto the porch where it's a bit warmer and more sheltered. I'm taking a chance this time with the last of the paprika peppers - just covering them - to try to squeeze a couple of more growing / ripening days out of them but I know they're living on borrowed time. The only stuff left in the garden is peas, lettuce, cabbage, carrots and leeks and if the Weather Channel is right for once, even these may not come through.

The big upside is that the garlic goes in this weekend. At this time of year, growing anything beats fall garden cleanup!

Yeah I probably should have seen which way the wind was blowing, and pulled everything up over the weekend while I had time. As it was, I got home as early as I could on Tuesday, and worked in the garden until nightfall. (It's a good thing we're still on Daylight Savings Time, though it feels less good as I head out for the bus in the morning in darkness.)

Picked peppers, tomatoes and melons. Pulled up basil and cilantro. Everything else is left to deal with the elements.

We only ended up with a light nip. The peppers could have survived that. The peppers are also the only of those plants that were still being productive. More time would have given me more ripe habaneros and fatalis.

It was a somewhat odd year in the garden, fairly poor for tomatoes, good for some peppers, but not others. I'm too inexperienced with melons to say whether it was a poor melon year, or just a poor melon Steve.

In Woodstock, temperatures Tuesday night didn't quite reach freezing. Tomatoes, basil, and peppers are still hanging in there. This week's Indian summer can't last long, though, and I'll harvest all the herbs by next weekend. The garden looks so vibrant now  strange to think of it mulched and dormant in a couple of weeks' time.

Since we haven't had a frost here in West Hurley yet, I went out and cut down everything that was browned and dead. This left a lush green garden full of colorful annuals and reblooming roses and daylilies.

Yes, it is strange to have all this at this time! I am really enjoying an 8 foot tall cosmos with about 30 fuchsia blooms on it, and 4' tall marigolds and zinnias. There is so much energy still in the garden!

I love autumn clean-up. It's getting ready for the winter and a fresh new spring with soil ready to go and green perennial 'buns' waiting to bloom.