Anyway … Last weekend I decide it was time to get a start on preparing the garden for winter so we got to work at putting away our patio furniture and tidying up the garden beds to some degree. We still have a lot of work to do, but at least we got things started.

While I was working in the garden I noticed that quite a few of my fall flowers were blooming so I got out my camera and took quite a few pictures. Here’s a few of my favorite garden photos from last weekend:

Toad Lilies! The only time of year that I can see lovely Toad Lilies blooming is in late September through October. Aren’t they absolutely lovely?

Then there are these lovely chrysanthemums. I have a large planter of them on my front porch blooming their pretty little heads off.

Sedum always shines at this time of year. I always think of it as kind of a filler plant in the spring and summer, but come Autumn it’s a star when it begins to bloom and turns lovely colors.

Monkshood is another Autumn favorite of mine. I have two types of Monkshood growing in my backyard garden. I believe the type in the photo below is Monkshood Azure.

This last photo is my favorite. Of course it’s a rose. This rose is Chicago Peace. It’s not as colorful as it would be in the Spring or early summer … but it’s still lovely. If it weren’t for the little tiny green leaf on one of the petals I think this would be an almost perfect picture of this rose.

Do you still have flowers blooming in your garden? If you do what’s blooming?

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We’d driven past the site a few times in the last couple of weeks and when I took a look at their website I discovered that they have a “no tax” Wednesday every week … so we figured we might save some money if we went shopping for our plants last night.

It turned out that they were having a 20% off sale … so we got that instead of the “no tax” as that saved us an extra 7%. They had a great selection of plants in a variety of sizes and the prices were ok … I’d be happy if the prices were the lowest I could find, but the discount and the quality of the plants made me a happy gardener.

We ended up spending more than I thought we would. You see we have several hanging planters, window planters and 7 balcony boxes (those large low rectangular planters) to fill with annuals.

I did grow some of my own annuals this year, but not nearly as many as I need.

So … what did we end up getting?

A flat of Impatiens, 2 nice double flowering Begonia, 2 small Fuchsia, 6 dwarf Dahlia’s, 6 Gerber Daisies, a few Coleus, several Lobelia and Petunia plants, dwarf white night scent Nicotina, several Marigolds in vibrant orange and yellow and I’m sure a few other plants that I can’t think of right now.

I also picked up some early Girl tomato plants, Sweet cherry 100, English cucumbers a few types of lettuce and Swiss Chard.

The only plants I couldn’t find, but ones that I usually use in my garden or planters were annual Geraniums and Cleomes. When I found the dwarf Dahlia’s I thought I’d use them instead of the Geraniums but if I can find some Geraniums this weekend I might use both.

As for the Cleomes I did find some at Reeves but they were single plants in 4 inch pots at 2.99 each … and I need about 20 of them to border the back of my garden beds so I’ll have to find cheaper ones. Oh and I did take some seeds off the plants last year so I’ll be planting some of last years seeds in the back of the garden beds this weekend too.

Earlier in the week we’d been to another garden center. I wanted to find a replacement for one of my roses – Chicago Peace – as it didn’t seem to come back this year. With the great weather we’ve had all year I’d think it would show signs of life by now, especially considering that all the rest of my roses are 3 to 7 feet high, full of leaves and rose buds … but no luck.

So … I thought I’d replace that rose with perhaps a Weigela or another type of flowering hardy shrub since I’ve now lost two roses in the same spot in the garden. I did pick out a purple Weigela that I love, but then I found yet another Chicago Peace … so I guess the Weigela will go in another place in the garden and I’ll try the rose for the third and final time in my small oval patio garden bed.

All in all I think I picked up 75 or more plants! You know what I’m going to be doing this weekend … planting, planting, planting. I’ll also be pulling out all my seeds and get some veggies and a few other annuals started by seed.

Hows the weather in your area? Are you going to be planting this weekend too?

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Well, so far this year I can’t say it’s been a great summer or great gardening season … Some of my plants are behind while others are not liking this weather at all!

We’re finally having some warm humid weather here in Toronto (still not as hot and humid as it usually is!) and that’s helping the plants make up for what’s been a cold summer! We haven’t had tons of rain, but when it does rain it rains a lot!

My roses don’t seem to like this weather. They’ve been hit fairly hard with powdery mildew and several have just about completely lost their blooms! I’ve treated the roses with my organic mix and I think they’ll begin to recover soon … but they’re going to look straggly for a while!

Actually … it’s just the roses in the backyard that are depleted of leaves. The ones in the front look great! Especially The Fairy rose and Bonica! Oh and they’re blooming like crazy too! Take a peak:

Lovely aren’t they? These are The Fairy Roses.

Oh well … at least most of the plants are growing and or producing veggies! My Tomatoes (cherry, tiny tom, early girl and Glam) are all full of green tomatoes. Hopefully the heat starts to help them ripen! Likewise my cucumber plants have tiny (smaller than Gherkins) cucumbers on them that I hope begin to grow soon. I can’t wait to have fresh tomatoes and cucumbers around!

At least I can eat some fresh fruit from my garden – even it’s only a handful! We finally picked our first raspberries off the bushes yesterday. Yummy!

If you’re weather is similar to mine you might have noticed that some of your plants are behind, smaller than normal or even taller than normal! For example, my Hydrangea is blooming, but the flowers are a little smaller than they normally are … yet my Phlox (Phlox David) and Balloon Flowers are blooming like crazy and they’re also much taller than normal … my Balloon flowers are over 4 feet tall! Biggest they’ve ever been!

Here’s my Hydrangea:

The sunflowers that I always grow in our planted boulevard were only two or so feet tall up until a week ago … then we got all that rain last weekend and they grew another two feet or more just like that. Their flowers are finally blooming, but again, they are smaller than normal. Geez … I’m used to having 8 foot tall sunflowers that the city tells me I have to cut down! LOL

At least my plants are blooming and growing. It could be worse!

I’ll leave you with this lovely picture of my Graham Thomas English rose … aren’t they gorgeous?

How’s your garden doing this week?

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What I mean by this is that from early April until last week or so, every time I visited my garden I had work to do! From spring clean up, pruning the roses and other plants to weeding to planting annuals to finally completing the big task of adding approximately 30 bags of red cedar mulch on my back and front garden beds.

We put mulch on our garden every year, but the last two years we only topped up the beds with a light layer. This year we noticed that the previous applications of mulch had really broken down, so we made sure to add a 3 inch layer this year – hence all the big heavy bags of mulch!

Other than doing a little pruning here and there as the roses grow and become floppy, and or staking the roses and other plants as they grow, most of the work is done. From here on in the main gardening job will be keeping it watered.

Actually there’s at least one more job. My husband and I made up a large garbage pail of Alfalfa tea about a month ago and it should be just about ready to be applied to the garden. Alfalfa seems to contain a growth hormone that causes the plants to row quite well once either alfalfa pellets are added to the soil and break down, or in our case once our evil stinking brew of Alfalfa tea has been applied. It’s a great natural fertilizer.  Obviously it’s also organic.  We are organic gardeners and never use chemicals on our plants or lawn.

We just have to make sure that we apply it to the garden when most of our close neighbors are indoors! It’s stinky! We usually apply alfalfa tea twice a year – once in early June and then again near the end of July, but we’re behind this year, so the garden might only get one dose this year.

Speaking of enjoying the garden … The first huge flush of roses is just about over. The roses started blooming in early June and now that first flush seems to be dying down. Most of my roses are re-bloomers or continuous bloom … but nothing beats that first Spring flush of roses as it’s usually the largest!

Other plants in bloom include Lavender, Salvia, Heuchera, some of my hostas, some of my clematis, Gazania, Marigolds, Petunias, Dianthus (Sweet William), Impatiens, Alyssum, Portulaca, Hollyhocks, Lilies, Daylilies, Maltese Cross and the list goes on. More plants will begin to bloom soon as well!

We also have a number of veggies growing ranging from Tomatoes, Tiny tom and Cherry tomatoes, cucumbers, beans, peas, a variety of lettuces, spinach and carrots. Plus we also grow strawberries and raspberries. Yummy.

Now if only it would get a little warmer here in Toronto. It’s been kind of cool the last two weeks with below average temperatures. It looks like it’s supposed to warm up a little bit this weekend, but overall it will still be below normal temps for a while. I do hope summer starts to feel like summer soon.

The only good thing about the slightly cooler temps is that I haven’t had to water the garden daily or even every second day and we haven’t really had the air-conditioning on. So we’re saving money on water and electricity. But enough already … It is after all supposed to be summer!

How is your garden doing this summer? Are you finished most of the hard work and like me find it’s time to sit back and enjoy the garden? And is your weather a little cooler than normal too?

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My Baron Prevost and Jack Cartier roses are standing tall near a wooden trellis that’s attached to the fence. I’ve also lightly attached some of the rose branches to the trellis (the trellis is mainly for the clematis that grows in front of it) and well, I guess the floppy rose branches got too heavy after the rain and they actually caused part of the trellis to break.

Upon discovering the broken trellis we fixed it with some 2×2′s – it’s very sturdy now and tied back some of the rose branches again.

Unfortunately one of the Baron Prevost rose branches snapped in half so rather than leaving the flowers out there to die I cut the branch off and then carefully cut some roses to bring indoors. Baron Prevost has a combination of large thorns and tiny thin prickly thorns covering it’s branches so it took some time to cut the roses off the branch and get them ready to go into a vase!

I almost never cut any of my flowers to bring inside. I prefer to enjoy them outside. Or I used to prefer them that way … after bringing in the very perfumey Baron Prevost flowers (and three peonies) I think I might change my mind.

I put the roses, two peony Peacher Peonies and one Karl Rosenfield peony in a vase in my kitchen and within minutes the whole main floor of our house was filled with a mix of rose perfume and delicate peony scent. In fact our house smelled of rose and peonies for two days before the roses started to wilt. Even then, the wilting roses still had some scent, although it was much milder than it had been when I first brought them indoors.

Do you ever bring some of your garden flowers indoors? Which ones are your favorites to bring inside?

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It’s been cooler than normal here in Toronto. They say our average temperature at this time of year is about 23 C (74 F), but it’s only been about 18 C (64 F) or cooler most of the month so far. I guess the aphids and slugs love these kind of temperatures, but so far it doesn’t seem like the Lady bugs do! I only saw on lonely Lady Bug feasting on aphids as I did my garden rounds.

Since the Lady Bugs aren’t going to eat all the aphids before they destroy my lovely roses I decided I’d have to go out there and fight them. So earlier this evening I went outside armed with a spray bottle full of water and a squirt of dish detergent and I sprayed all my rose plants and rose bugs with the mixture.

Die Aphids! Die!

I fully expect to go outside tomorrow and see dessicated aphid bodies stuck to my rose buds. Victory!

I’m glad it’s so easy to kill them!

As for my roses, so of the first flowers came out earlier this week. As usually Morden Sunrise was the first rose to bloom. It was quickly followed by Stanwell Perpetual and Charles Albanel. All of these rose are at the front of my house – surprisingly, since the majority of my roses are in the south facing back yard. You’d think the roses in the back would bloom first, but I guess not.

In the backyard, William Baffin has one rose open and so does Parade … all the rest of my many roses have buds that are in various stages – from just forming to just about to bloom. I’m sure that by the weekend most of my roses will have a few to many many blooms. It will be lovely.

Now we just need it to start getting warmer! Oh well … at least we don’t have to have the air-conditioning on so we’re saving money!

How’s your garden doing? Have you noticed a lot of aphids or other garden pests on your plants? How do you get rid or them.

I just remembered, we have one other major garden pest – the Lily Beetle. My lilies look awful this year. Their foliage is all raggy and they aren’t growing as well as they normally do. Anyone know of a non-toxic (no pesticide) way to get rid of lily beetles?

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The weather outside is miserable right now.

It’s cold and instead of snow there are ice pellets coming down! I think everything will have a coat of ice on it when I get up in the morning. Brrrr.

As I thought about what kind of post I’d do for Green Thumb Sunday the weather outside (the weather that I got to experience first hand while taking our dog out for her last outing of the night) I remembered how pretty my flowers look just after a rain. Then I remembered this lovely picture of an Iceberg rose … now doesn’t the name of the rose kind of fit the weather we’re having too? LOL

So I present to you and Iceberg rose on an ice pellet day. Hey, it works for me …

I’ll add this cool purple Alium as well. It’s supposed to be a spring bloomer, but mine tend to bloom in late June or early July. The iceberg roses will bloom long before the Alium next year.

Are any of you lucky enough to be enjoying flowers due to living in a warmer climate than I? If so, I envy you. I already miss my garden.

Actually .. I do have a few flowers blooming indoors. My Thanksgiving cactus has almost finished it’s blooms and my Christmas Cactus has a few early blooms. Plus … I have a small hibiscus in my kitchen and it’s producing lovely coral flowers for us. So I guess I’m not as deprived as I thought I was.

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This is one of my favorite roses. It’s called Breath of Life and it’s a climbing rose.

The plant grows right at the entrance to my garden and when it’s in bloom I can see it’s lovely flowers from my kitchen window, the enclosed back porch and of course as I begin walking out my back door. What a lovely rose to greet me!

It blooms regularly throughout the summer so I almost never see it without roses. In fact this stubborn plant has a perfectly formed dead rose at the tip of one of it’s branches right now … even thought it’s absolutely freezing out! I’m surprised the rose hasn’t fallen off yet.

BTW sorry this post is so late. I’ve been sick all weekend. Sore throat and or swollen gland in my neck, sore ear, stuffy nose, massively bad headache and a grumbley stomach. No, I’m not a happy camper!

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Of all the roses I grow I think my Yves Piaget Romance rose is putting on the biggest fall show:

It’s just full of blooms!

As you can see from this picture the roses get a little over blown fairly quickly, but they stay this way, with their petals all puffed out for days, especially in this cool weather.

Actually I think all the roses are enjoying the very cool weather we’ve been having here in Toronto. They are growing and some are developing buds, even though they really should be shutting down for winter by now.

If you grow roses, how are they doing right now? Are they enjoying the cool weather and flowering?

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Can you believe it?

I think I’m actually starting to run out of new pictures for my Green Thumb Sunday posts! (it doesn’t help that I do GTS on three blogs either).

I just don’t seem to have the variety of photos in stock that I normally do.

Perhaps it was all that rain this year, keeping me from getting outside and taking photos of my plants in different stages … or mucking up my plants so much that I didn’t want to take pictures! LOL

This is a beauty from earlier in the summer. It’s a Westerland climbing rose. It looks like it’s just beginning to develop buds again, so I’m sure it will be flush with blooms by the end of September .. and oh what blooms they are! This is a gorgeous rose with a heavenly scent.

Hmmm today is supposed to be fairly nice .. I think I’ll try to get out and take some new photos. Gotta store some up for winter GTS posts!

Gardeners, Plant and Nature lovers can join in every Sunday, visit As the Garden Grows for more information. GTS participants remember to check in at As the Garden Grows each week so that we’ll know you made a new post!

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