The toughest Dahlia, and patio news

Look at her! After a foot of snow, and zub-zero temperatures, this dahlia is drooping, but still petal perfect. Wow. Even blowing up in Lightroom it still looks great.

The purple ones seem to be the toughest.

The others have definitely packed it in for the year, but there's still a beauty in the crumpled and dying petals.

These were all in pots in the front patio. Linda has been musing about where to put some peonies she got a good deal on, and had been waiting for a nice fall day to plant them. Peonies do better planted in the fall, or so it is said.

Well, the problem is that we haven't had a fall, essentially. We went from summer, to crappy Vancouver weather, and then a big dump of winter. Yesterday was nice, and most of the snow has melted from the patio. Linda shovelled it off, emptied out the pots, laying out the dahlias to let the bulbs/tubers/roots/whatever dry off in the hopes of preserving them over the winter to be planted in spring. Then she dug out the old concrete patio stones, separated the grass and thyme that was growing between them, humped a bunch of dirt/compost from the BIG bag she scored a deal on earlier this year, and planted peonies, and other stuff.

Here's before, and an in progress look from this morning. It was too dark to take a shot last night when she finished.

Today is supposed to be nice. Tomorrow who knows? So she's going to be going driving herself along like a rented mule trying to get this all finished up to get through winter, plus do the winter decorations she likes.

Note to anyone that comes to visit us. Do not take the short cut through the patio if you park on the side street. I should probably put up some warning tape or something.