surviving the cold

I cut the green onions just in time: that night was our first hard frost, temps in the twenties (no snow yet). Next morning my one potato plant is wilted mush, so are most of the 'scat plant'- the few in the more sheltered garden patch still green. I mulched the garden with shredded sycamore leaves. Surprised that the borage has held up- in fact some of them look grander than ever:

Lots of smaller ones crowding what was the carrot patch- I leave them for now because hey, it's something green to look at.

There are still two beets, which I'm going to pull soon mostly for the greens, and I cut one small swiss chard yesterday.

I mulched my pots of mint also, and moved them against the house wall. Choc mint still fresh enough to use for tea on occasion, and ginger mint went into a stir-fry yesterday.

Black-and-blue salvia wilted, but the blue flags of flowers still had color, it was curious to see the bright petals hanging from the stems of darkened, limp leaves. I cut them down to about ten or twelve inches, and heaped leaves over. Read mixed results about wintering the plant outside- some people dig it up and store root mass in the garage. My leaf heap looks untidy- it's in the front yard- so I'm thinking of upending a large pot over it for shelter. I'd sure like to keep it going next year.

The yellow japanese salvia still has plenty of greenery on it, in spite of the cold. I pulled all the now-sad lime-and-orange coleus from the front, and the end of cosmos and marigold stems. Mums are still brave with color in the front yard, although heaped around with leaf litter too. (I have a bigger leaf mulch pile started now, so hopefully next fall will have more finished leaf mold for the yard, which is much tidier-looking). Hostas and other stuff are of course, wilting now as well (although to my surprise echinacea, bee balm and nicotiana still hold some green in the rear bed- maybe sheltered a bit by the huge fenced-in leaf pile), so I appreciate the few evergreen plants I've managed to put in: the young euonymus in the back (which I can just see from my kitchen window), the nandina (grown up to my hip now), the pretty leaves of hellebores and the rhodies in the back. Holly by the side deck shines with health, and has lots of red berries this year.

I was wondering how rue would respond to the frost- I know it's a perennial, and somewhere I read it's considered a "small evergreen shrub" but the foliage looks so delicate!. It drooped a little bit, otherwise it looks untouched by the temperature drop.