Carogil Farm: Fall Garden

Sunday, October 16, 2016

Fall Garden

Hello dear friends, another vacation week is over and as always so much of the "to-do" list remains undone! We did however have an enjoyable week with a Thanksgiving dinner, bicycle riding and puttering in the garden. If the mild weather continues we may still have another 2 or 3 weekends of garden work before putting everything away for the winter.

We have had a very dry and hot summer so are pleasantly surprised to see the maples put on a glorious display of colour. This part of our property faces the road and runs along farm lane. We like the look of split cedar rail fencing however it is not always practical with our collection of dogs who would like nothing more than to sneak through the rails to visit the dog across the road. Although we live on a country road we still have car traffic and sadly some motorists think that a quiet country road is a license to speed. Our various fences help to keep our dogs safe.

This part of the fence faces the road at our driveway.

This is a view of our lower lawn. We like to give different parts of our property names so when we are having important daydreams about gardens we know exactly which part of the property we are referring to!

This is also part of our lower lawn and we refer to this garden as Tessie's Garden. It took a great many years for the blue spruce to actually start looking blue.

This is a view towards the road. A couple of years ago we had a new driveway constructed to allow heavy equipment to get to our house. We have plans to continue the driveway to have it sweep around to the front of our house. As with many projects however nothing is a simple as it seems! In order to accomplish this task some fencing and a gate need to be moved, new fencing needs to be installed, a formal gate needs to be installed at the road and part of a garden needs to be moved. In the meantime this little pasture holds much of the top soil that was removed to allow for some construction, Perhaps next year we will tackle this big project.

Some of our round bales of hay patiently waiting to be moved to the barn.

It seems that we have either a resident squirrel or chipmunk making quick work of some of the apples in the grove.

A view towards the lower garden from the dining terrace area.

These are our two senior-most seniors. Willow (left) is 10 years old and Drakk is 11 years old, We are happy to be able to provide a great home in the country for these lovely dogs.

This driveway runs behind our house. One of the mysteries of this old farm is why the driveway was built at the back of the house instead of at the front. I regret not having asked the elderly couple that lived next door more questions about the history of our house. They observed many changes to our property over the decades however as they have both passed away there are some questions we will never have answers to. We have made many changes since purchasing the farm including adding a stone retaining wall and curving the driveway.

This is our dining terrace just off of our formal dining room. We had hoped to add a second load of gravel to this area this fall but time seems to have slipped away. There was quite a bit of settling of the ground in this area so have not yet finished it.