I've started walking round staring at it but not actually moved anything yet - perhaps a tad early but you have to start sometime!

Probably not too early up in Renfrewshire, but way too early for those of us in London, other than the usual ongoing summer removing of dead flowers and foliage.

Done some dead heading but I have serious digging/weeding to do in several borders. But in no rush now.

I am maybe being a bit early here, but the past few years were so wet that many things did not get done simply because the weather got in the way.

The summer here was not great either and many of the plants are very leggy and woody. So, they need to be tidied up in any case.

However, today was a start. Tomorrow it is the back garden that will get my attention........ although my recycling bin is now full. :( Weather permitting. Today we have had some beefy showers. In fact, one this morning was not only heavy, but the sky darkened and the wind picked up blowing the rain across the garden. It really was loike winter for 30 minutes.

Weather can be a problem. It rains nearly all November here, and the rain is horizontal so anything that isn't moved by then has to stay put...

Spent this weekend with some light tidying up, and making notes for plants to move/ divide/ on hols in a couple of weeks so making sure plants are labelled (for colour etc ) as last year most flowers had gone over and had no idea what was what, pot luck and educated guess when re planted this spring???
apart from mass slug attack seemed to get away with it though, hence forward planning this time round??

Oh, how I loathe November.... at its worst here its fog, frost, stark bare trees, light late in the morning, dark too early, air that smells different, almost like iron, and all colour drained from the landscape, even the air looks grey, eugh... I don't usually work outdoors from mid November at the latest, that's it till January.

I've made a start, too. Recent autumns have been so wet and impossible to work in, so, like you, I don't want to get caught out again!

Regarding green waste, our local recycling facility still takes it, but getting there is such a faff. We have no choice, though, as our green-waste wheelie bin is only large enough for those with nothing more than a patch of lawn, which is pretty useless to me and most folk in my area. We've been offered an extra green wheelie bin (large ones not available) but we have no room for it. We were then told to compost it all, which was not helpful as we don't have the room to compost all of the green garden waste we generate. The major problem we have here is that green waste is collected every 2 weeks rather than every week, and they stop green-waste collection completely between the end of October and the end of March. It's quite ridiculous. Councils really need to get a grip, otherwise people will give up on wildlife-friendly gardens altogether.

Not quite as simple as that though Rosie rose - our local authority has charged £50 a year to recycle garden rubbish for the last two years, a service which was free for ten years previously. And yes, they don't collect in winter, and its now fortnightly not weekly, but unfortunately, unless you want to pay five times the council tax you already pay, they have no choice - its those big scissors the government's been using for the last six years that's caused the situation. I'm surprised councils have enough left to supply a free rubbish collection, never mind garden waste and recycling.

My council provides a big bin for gdn waste, collected fort nightly, but it costs £50 per annum, so I share with my neighbour & also compost a lot. They still also do the take it yourself to the local pick up point. Your council is very mean if they don't provide you with anything. No wonder people fly tip. I'll bet they moan about that. Down here in Surrey, we've had no rain for ages. I have done a bit of cutting back of annuals & they are regrowing & flowering again. It will be November at least before the big tidy up.
Thanks for your blog, nice to know what our members up north are doing

Our council do provide a free brown bin collection service every fortnight. But this is not good enough for tree cuttings, old shrubs, turf, etc. The local recycling centre was excellent and although it was hard to lift a builders' bag of cuttings into the car, it was still better than being left with no where to take them.

I accept the point about public expenditure cuts, however, I feel that too oftn these are targetted where they are most likely to cause conflict with central governement. In Scotland, the Nationalists have long pushed the green agenda, and, of course, they have recycling targets to achive. My feeling is that these recycling centres have been sacrifised more for political reasons rather than sound budgetary principles. After all, at some point all this waste is going to pile up somewhere and need to be removed!