Courtesy Stockbyte/Thinkstock The local nursery is showing Christmas ornaments of all colors, getting me excited for the holiday season. |
I spent the morning on leaf duty again, raking and using the leaf vac to clear off the back patio and perennial beds. I’m already looking forward to harvesting all the leaf compost I’m sure to have come spring, but it’s hard to believe the holiday season is just around the corner.
I gave a talk to a group of gardeners at a local nursery yesterday afternoon about gardening with deer—a popular topic around western Pennsylvania. While I was there, I had the opportunity to walk around the nursery and check everything out. Aside from all the Thanksgiving decorations, they had some fabulous displays of Christmas merchandise. It put me in the holiday mood long before I want to be!
I’m not ready to start shopping or decorating yet (let’s enjoy Thanksgiving first), but it was fun to get a glimpse of some of this year’s expected decorating trends. They had lots of candles, hand-carved Nativity scenes, shabby chic accessories, wooden ornaments and lots and lots of colors—and not just red and green either. There was lots of teal and pink and purple and all the jewel tones. It looked very festive indeed!
Of course, I also checked out the plant material while at the nursery. From what I hear, it was a pretty decent year for independent garden centers, so I wasn’t surprised to see that they didn’t have a lot of green goods remaining on the nursery shelves and greenhouse benches. There were some beautiful variegated hollies and boxwoods, some bayberries, some ornamental kale and a handful of various balled and burlapped trees.
Although it’s getting late to plant around here, I was very tempted. The prices were certainly reasonable (I’m sure they don’t want to have to overwinter their remaining nursery stock) and the plants were in very good shape. I refrained, though, knowing that at the moment, I have my own gardening hands full of projects to be completed before winter sets in in a few short weeks.
