November this year was surprisingly dry. We did get a couple of heavy snowfalls, which is unusual for this time of year here. Usually, it's constant rain. December seems to be making up for that though. It's been raining for days and days now with hardly a break - one of the downfall of living in a temperate rainforest, I guess.

I bought tons of alliums that were on sale around the end of November and just barely managed to get them into the ground. I got about 160 dollars worth for 20 bucks. What a steal! I sacrificed one of the 8 x4 vegetable beds to plant them in as that's the only place that was adequately prepared. I'll move them next fall once the mixed borders have been prepared.

Here's my growing compost pile. Notice the the left side is quite a bit darker than the right. It's about 3 1/2 weeks old now. The other side has only been there a couple of days. I've been turning the pile once a week -we'll see how long that lasts! Actually, I'm finding this task more enjoyable than I thought. There's something satisfying about turning that pile and then going back each week to find it getting blacker and blacker. The pile is a mixture of leaves from Tony and Lydia's garden, grass clippings, and kitchen waste. I also added some bone meal. Everything I've read so far says that you should let your leaves decompose by themselves because they take much longer to break down. I've got a good 4 -5 months to let this cook so we'll see... I think its' doing pretty well even in this short of time.

Butter Lettuce. In November! We've had a couple of frosty mornings, so we'll see how long it lasts .

Had I known you could have lettuce growing at this time of year I would have planted more varieties.

I planted this mescalin mix in the middle of september just to see what would happen. We're still getting cuttings off of it - though I planted too thickly. Live and Learn!

This is the backyard of our home that we bought last fall. The only sign of plant life that existed was the spreading bamboo at the very back and a meadow of dandy lions. We bought when the weather was nice and after the first heavy rain we noticed that a small lake was forming in the backyard. After many hours of mowing, aerating, thatching, digging up sod, removing rocks, tilling, amending the soil, more tilling and more rock removal we've finally got a few raised beds ready for next year's spring planting.

We removed 70 bags of thatch from this lawn! Now it only gets squishy in some lower areas!

Myfriend has romantic visions of a pond here, but all I can see is the excavator coming in and the money going out that it's going to cost to get rid of the invasive stuff! My neighbor poured battery acid on his and that didn't effect it at all!