Mess, Mush and Yet More Leaves!

A single lovely frosty morning and then back to the usual muggy, mild and rainy weather!  Just what we didn't want! The ground is already sodden but we persevered as best we could. It was too wet for real border work but we were able to lift dahlias and cut down dead herbaceous plants in the top lawn border. We pressed on and cleared away much of the slimy debris working from the edge of the lawn and the path as 'mush' as we could!

I'm really not sure about the modern idea of leaving all the dead stems and seed heads for the birds to eat and the frost and snow to adorn.  Dead plant material in these conditions just collapses and turns to black mush and there's no sign of birds eating mush!  In any case, our birds have cordon bleu avian menus daily!    Having said that, we then turned our attention to blowing away another week's collection of dead leaves and, to speed up the process a little, Chris put his (new) blower through the trees themselves which was much more fun - as you'll see:  Speeding up leaf fall! 

As usual, darkness came much too soon and Chris ended up doing some winter Prunus pruning by torchlight!