Mean, thrifty or green?

Golden wisteria and a carpet of hazel leaves but the dahlias are still green and budding...

Every so often I become aware of having inherited a little of my Yorkshire Dad's "waste not want not" philosophy.  I don't think it's meanness, I just hate waste and equally hate being exploited.   This tends to come to the fore in gardening activities, plant labelling being a prime example and as at the weekend I finally decided I would have to start lifting the dahlias - green and thriving as they were - to make space for tulips I realised that one of the things that was making me procrastinate was the labelling issue.   Last year I spent ages making labels for my dahlias from old wooden lolly sticks.   What a waste of time - they all faded!   But this year I was really chuffed to find that the labels I had made with indelible marker pen written on to strips of cut up plastic milk bottles were mostly still legible next to the plants when I dug them up.   So I have wrapped each tightly around the remaining stub of stem with a bit of garden wire or string re-cycled from the plant supports.   Great if they don't fade over winter; will have to remember to check them.
Digging up the tubers was satisfying work - enjoyed equally by a hungry robin!   It also threw up another dilemma - what to do with them over winter.  The last 2 years have been fairly disastrous as I failed to protect the tubers from 1. extreme cold and 2. mildew.   So I began lifting them and putting them to dry on a rack in the greenhouse still pondering the best method.   Happily, a lovely guy I was shooting with on Sunday, who runs his own landscape gardening business near Portsmouth, had a bright suggestion - a garage - the ideal compromise.

Next weekend I will have to finish the job and get down to some serious decision-making with my tulip combinations.   It can't possibly be as warm and sunny....