Moving Mountains

Of manure that is, but more of that in a bit. I think I'm jinxed when it comes to photographs of this garden at the moment, so without any explanations, may I apologise now for the lack of pics again this week. Hopefully I'll get some usable pics next week to compensate.
Glorious day - clear blue skies all day - a wee bit fresh in the morning but considering we're only 4 and a bit weeks from Christmas, I ain't about to complain.
Anyway, today was spent mostly on the "rose-bed", Now, this is the smallest of the borders / beds in the garden bar the two areas either side of the Summerhouse which are home to a Garrya and a Viburnum respectively. So I set about it's upgrade with the words "this won't take too long" rattling around in the space where I used to have a brain. Well, there were three old (and large) thorny shrub roses to be dug out and this took quite a bit of work but eventually all three were removed and all the root sytems taken away too. Then I weeded the whole bed before applying a generous mulch of manure. Doesn't sound much does it. It's only a small bed - if you want to call 14m x 4m a small bed ! Believe me, after barrowing 26 full barrows of muck from the wild end of the garden, it didn't feel so small !
But at least it's a job well done and finished and that bed can be put to sleep for the winter.
I also lifted the dahlia tubers  and after cleaning them up and leaving them in the sun for two or three hours to dry any remaining soil up, they are now residing in floists buckets full of dry peat in the potting shed. The tubers are considerably bigger than they were when they were planted, so we should get a lot of plants next Spring - and the plan is now to put all the dahlias in the newly manured rosebed when the time comes.
I also cleared the tomato plants from the greenhouse - they did okay but not quite as well as I had hoped and although the bell peppers flowered, it was too late for fruits to form so we got a zero return from these. More muck in the greenhouse beds for next year methinks!
Although I was expecting the rasp canes to have arrived, with Sally having been told they were dispatched last week, there was no sign of them, so Sally called the supplier who told us we had been misinformed and they had only started to lift them last week ready for sending out all their orders, so hopefully we'll have them by next Tuesday -but if not, I won't be short of things to do.
The weather forecast says the weather is to turn cold over the weekend and that will be the start of winter proper - this is exactly the same weekend as the snow arrived up here last year, so with that in mind, the chainsaw is away being serviced as it can expect to see quite a lot of use over the coming couple of months.
Anyway, that's it for today, see ya next week