Hard Freeze Coming

Rain coming Sunday, and snow on Monday. The overnight low temperature on Monday night will be 26 degrees.

That's not a mid-October frost, that's a hard freeze. 

Time to bring the big pot of Cape plumbago inside. It's a tender perennial and won't like Monday's weather. It did beautifully all summer in the hot dry sun here, and I'd hate to lose it. 

I grew plumbago in pots outdoors in my old garden back east, and tried to winter it over each year inside, but that never worked. I ended up buying a new plant each summer and starting over.

But here in the sunny, south facing sliding glass door in my bedroom, I will try again to keep it through the winter.

This time it will be in a much sunnier spot indoors, and this time I'll keep the soil dry, and of course, this time will be different. Not to worry.

I do worry about the new things I just planted in the gardens this week -- the spindly starts of Maximilian sunflowers and a new little hosta and some other plants I got at the fall sales. They've only been in the ground a week or so, and all are little. A frost would not set them back, but it's a hard freeze coming, and snow too, and I worry about them making it through that.