Today, it was time for me to start cutting back the Yellow Flag irises for the winter. But first, I took my usual stroll through the yard to see how everyone was doing.

I still have a bloom on the Chinese Snowball. And I finally pulled the straggler weed from in front of the Frostproof gardenia !

I can never tell if the Yucca Color Guard is still alive. It seems to look the same at all times, and has since I planted it.

So far, so good for the Shell ginger.

It looks like the existing dogwood tree has joined the October Glory Maple tree in turning red for the fall.

The October Glory maple has been red for a couple of weeks, and should be starting to drop its leaves very soon.

The Anthony Waterer spirea looks fine.

Leaves have been falling at an accelerated pace over this past week. I spent yesterday mulching what had fallen to this point. The interesting thing is that it doesn't look like I did much one day later.

Even though it doesn't look like it, I mulched everything that was laying in the yard and on the driveway and spread it around as needed.

I've been slowly adding mulched leaves by the Illicium Pink Frosts and Pieris Snowdrift.

And I added more mulched leaves around the patio and Mine No Yuki camellias.

Mother Nature is dropping enough leaves and pine needles to cover everything in the side yard.

Yesterday, I added homemade mulch to that around the new Pink Snow camellias.

Well what do you know ! I'm seeing a Pink Snow bloom. The tag did say that they bloom in the fall.

After mulching, I continued to remove more English Ivy.

I've still got a long way to go before I get the whole side yard cleared.

Two-picture panorama of the English Ivy in the side yard.

My ivy pile keeps growing.

Today's project was to begin the process of cutting back the Yellow Flag irises for the winter.

I started with the simple stuff first.

My goal was to get as much done as I could before Mother Nature started raining on me.

I started with the small clusters because they go quickly.

I was able to get all of the small clusters cut back.

I finished just in time before the rain arrived.

With the small clusters done, only the large area seen in the photo above, the center section, and the area at the pine tree and camellia cluster remain. I'll attack these in the coming weeks.