Gardening in December in Ohio!

What an amazing unusually warm weekend for us here in Ohio - highs near 60!  Saturday I spent the entire day out in the garden - just wished it didn't get dark so early or I could have got a lot more done.  I was able to finish installing the new side boards on the 2 garden row beds.  I wish I would have ordered more lumber as I'm in love with how this is turning out!  It looks so nice and neat, can't wait till we can get some extra straw next spring to line the paths so its not so muddy.  It started to rain today (Sunday) around 6am and was off & on till about noon.... making the garden very muddy so I couldn't do much more to it.  I did get a bucket of chickweed pulled on the north end where I could be in the grass.  The hens were checking the new beds out yesterday - unfortunately they were still scratching the dirt into the paths...  =/   Will have to mulch the beds heavily next year to keep them from scratching so much, or at least just scratch straw/mulch.

The oregano is still green and alive in the one bed, and the other bed has swiss chard (which I will be covering next week after I up up more hoop supports) and onions.  I actually transplanted some of the onions to get them into certain area instead of sprawled out here and there - I want to see how well they overwinter in the ground and start growing more next year.  

This was a photo taken this morning while it was raining... I smile looking at the new beds... I'm like a little kid - did I mention I can't WAIT to have all the beds edged by the wood!!  Small things like this make me VERY happy! 

We also planted 2 Arrowwood Viburnum at the back edge of the driveway.  These are more of my freebies from Arbor Day Foundation.  They are supposed to be a fast grower and get between 6-15' tall and wide.  Figured this would create a little privacy from the road for when we are having bonfires out back.   Its a multi-stemmed dense shrub with creamy white late spring/early summer flowers and then blueish berries that ripen early fall.   Supposed to provide food, cover and nesting for birds and larval food for butterflies.  The variety pack of plants we got is the wildbird garden collection - so many of them have some sort of berries to feed the birds such as the sargent crabapple, gray dogwood and these viburnums.  They are all just little sticks in the ground right now but I had planted one of these sticks when I 1st moved here out front (Washington Hawthorn) and its as tall as I am already (6 yrs).

I dug up the Dalhias we planted out in the newer flower bed by the big barn - I had almost forgot about them - this was the 1st year I ever had dalhias, yet another plant that has to be dug up like the cannas and elephant ear... my basement is full of tidy cat buckets full of tubers...

I think the rest of the day will be spent with my seed catalog and my iPad using my garden planner app to come up with next years plans!  Can it be Feb soon so I can start to start my seeds? =) 107 days left till Spring!!!   I have a feeling my entire Christmas wish list will be 100% gardening stuff!