First freeze

It was only a couple of hours in the predawn morning, but October 12 brought a cold snap with a freeze.  Some plants showed damage, some beyond recovery, but most didn't show any change.

Since they still had some nice, but green, fruit, I cut the 'Missouri Pink Love Apple' tomato cages free from their stakes and laid them all prone so I could cover them for the night. They came through fine.  I've just left them lying horizontally for the remainder of the season.

Surprisingly, the one 'Mrs. Maxwell' plant that I left standing and uncovered didn't suffer any damage, nor did the cherry tomato 'Sun Gold', so maybe the Missouri pinks would have been okay.  The only tomato plant that showed dieback was the volunteer.

'Sun Gold' 

The purple hull cowpeas showed some damage on the topmost leaves, but the beans are fine, and I expect to get at least one more harvest from them.

The limas showed a little more damage than the cowpeas, but they weren't producing much at this point anyway, so I pulled them.  I also pulled one 'Mrs. Maxwell' tomato plant that didn't have any tomatoes on it, along with all but one of the zinnias which had petered out, so that end of the garden is pretty well cleared out now, with the exception of the permanent rose and grapevine, some clover ground cover and some spicy bush basil, plus those two cabbages that have just dragged along all season amidst some marigolds.

Every time I write a sentence like that (what my elementary school teachers would call a run-on sentence), I think of Mark Twain's comment about the Germans:

Whenever the literary German dives into a sentence, that is the last you are going to see of him till he emerges on the other side of his Atlantic with his verb in his mouth.

To my surprise, the peppers came through without any problem.

I didn't expect the cardinal basil to survive, so I harvested most of it before the freeze.  Some went into bouquets.

'Cardinal' basil, red-veined sorrel, globe amaranth, annual vinca, 'Poseidon' roses

Some is just sitting in a bucket of water waiting for nothing, probably.

What I left had to be pulled out the next day.

Thankfully, neither the 'Caradonna' salvia in the same bed, nor any other of the perennials sustained any damage.

The spicy bush basil was freeze-damaged on the topmost leaves, but since they're so bushy, I was able to cut away those darkened, damaged leaves and still have healthy plants.  You can see the difference in the picture below where I've cut off some of the top leaves:

The roses didn't mind the weather.

Speaking of the perennial bed...

I finally finished digging it all.  I've moved a few more plants into to, planted some spring bulbs, and now it awaits a winter mulch.  I'm hoping to collect and chop fall leaves from the maple trees to spread and then cover it all with a layer of cedar bark.

The other day, I saw a large orb-weaving spider with a color pattern that I don't recall seeing before, but that doesn't mean I haven't.  Doing a bit of research, I see that this is called the banded garden spider  (Agriope trifasciata).

This is the pattern I'm used to seeing:

That, I see, is the yellow garden spider (Agriope aurantia).

Just to throw out a little factoid which you may already know: spiders aren't technically insects.  They're arachnids.

And the sulfurs have been flitting about lately.  Here's one feeding on a petunia.

There's not much left of gardening season.  That little freeze was a reminder of what's coming.  Not looking forward to it.  Wish I could just hibernate through the winter.

Till next time - whenever that may be.