foolish?

Last days of my nasturtiums-

I moved them into pots a few days ago- the weather was still so mild- so I could cover the window boxes with leaf mulch and wire (to keep the squirrels from digging there) but few days later it got very cold and they died anyway of course, oh well.

Some seed- 

I gathered them but they're still green, so don't know if mature enough.

This year instead of leaving pots with dirt in them out on the deck or underneath stacked - from where herbs and coleus came out- I put them on the shelves in my little greenhouse. So the squirrel doesn't keep burying things in them making a mess. The plastic sheeting on the greenhouse has torn in places, but that's okay I'll just rewrap it in spring as usual.

I tidied up the stand of echinacea seedheads. Don't like the look of all the blackened withered leaves hanging in tatters, plus on close inspection they have that faint crystallized glittery look tithonia leaves often got- I bet it's from aphids. And this year my tithonia had far fewer aphid problems, I think because I cleaned up the leaf litter and dying foliage more assidiously.

So I tried to pull off the dead echinacea leaves, but keep the seedheads on for the birds. A bit tricky, since a lot of the leaves fall off or crumble at the touch- much of it fell on the ground. I gathered what I could, it did fill a whole five-gallon bucket for the yard waste pickup, and if it cuts the aphid problem in half I'll feel I did some good with that.