Why I Oughta...

The large Northern Red Oak tree in our backyard (tree swing tree) has mostly dropped its leaves this Winter, but there is a small bit of foliar marcescence going on closer to the trunk on the lower, newer limbs.  Below is a look at the canopy of this mighty oak where you can see the brown, dried leaves only on the central, lower section of the tree this Winter: Over the years, this tree has dropped its leaves at different times, but this year was an 'early' year.  But, that was (I think) driven by an early Snow, so there's tons of these hard-to-break-down oak leaves scattered around our backyard that are still buried under the snow.  They'll wait for Spring clean-up and mulching by my mower.  

2024 is one of the years where our large, mature Red Oak trees aren't holding their leaves late into Winter.  This year, they've dropped MOST of them already - by December 1st.  I've posted about these two backyard Oak trees - the Tree Swing Oak and the southside Oak - over the years - documenting how much foliar marcescence takes places.   This year - here are a couple of photos showing the canopy of these trees on December 1st:  mostly bare. Here is December 6, 2019 - when the Oaks were holding TONS of leaves .   Here is November 23, 2020 - when the trees (both of them) had dropped all their leaves . Here is December 2, 2021 - when the tree swing tree was holding leaves .   Here is November 22, 2023 - when they were FULL of brown leaves .  

In October, I turned my compost over.   That meant pulling out the 'black gold' in the tumbler (that's where I finish the compost each year) and then re-filling the tumbler with more-finished (than the rest) of the compost from the right bin.  Then using a compost fork to pull out and move the stuff from the 'middle bin' to the 'right bin' - where it was properly mixed.  And finally...taking the storage bin - the 'left bin' which is mostly leaves and kitchen scraps and mixing it in the middle bin.  That left the 'storage bin' on the left empty. For like 10 days.   Here's what it looks like today - below.  The left bin (with the 'feed me' sign) is filling up with leaves that have come off our lawn and out of our gardens: There is A LOT of air in this bin, so these leaves will compact/compress to about 1/2 of the bin height.  I'm going to give it a pause for a week-or-so, then come back and fill it back up with even more leaves...

Dahlias aren't the only thing 'popping off' in our garden right now .  Surprisingly (to me), I'm seeing some nice-shaped blooms on our Disneyland Roses that are planted in our sideyard.  Last year, we had six of these Disneyland Roses - but I lost all three in the front porch bed.  (I replaced them with Dahlias, which...I think worked out nicely...) But, the three on the sideyard are still around.  But, they struggled all year.  I published a post in June titled:  The Disneyland Roses are Struggling .  At that time, they were dealing with (what I'm pretty sure was) a double-trouble combo:  sawfly larvae and fungus.  I treated them a variety of ways - Neem Oil, insecticide dust, systemic combo treatment.  They seemed to 'rebound' by late June .  But, that might have been a response to fertilizer.  Then, they dropped all their leaves.  That had me REALLY worried. Articles like this one - talking about how roses drop their le...