I got out on these mild days and cleaned up a bit -- tossed the petunias, cut back some stalks.
But with more weeks yet of nice weather, it's still too soon to do much else. Too soon to shut off the irrigation and too soon to bring pots into the garage to overwinter.
After a wet summer (12 inches since April 30, most of it gentle and soaking) we are expecting more rain next week, over several days.
Wet, mild, and so unusual.
Every year since we have been here, a hard freeze comes quickly and everything gets zapped by now. In some years the garden is done for by late September. Not this year.
On that side it usually just quickly browns with the typical early frost, but this year it hasn't crisped yet, it's just bronzy and dark.
Not the brilliant red advertised and not the bright red of the vine on the other side by the Rose of Sharon.
I plan to bring the David Verity cuphea into the house for the winter, then plant it out in the white bowl next year.
I'll put it by my sunny bedroom slider. It needs a hard pruning in late winter -- it's gotten a little leggy.
I'll have to see how it works to overwinter it, and whether we can go away in January (to CA) and again in March (to Tucson) and leave it unwatered for a week or more then.
It is supposed to have water reduced and dry out while indoors, but it will need some.
This way I'll have a larger, mature plant to put in the bowl next spring, rather than waiting all summer for a small purchased plant to get any size and fill out -- which both David Verity and Vermillion didn't do until late August, really.
But with our mild damp fall and an extended forecast of more, it's still too early to bring this cuphea in.
The forecast is making me antsy for fall tasks!