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’re at the height of summer and I find that almost every day we’re having a meal in the garden on the patio. It’s lovely to sit outdoors enjoying the beauty of the garden and when we’re lucky it’s bounty as well.

As I mentioned in my last post, our tomatoes are just beginning to ripen and very soon we’ll have cucumbers and beans. We’ve already been enjoying strawberries and raspberries from the garden and I expect that we’ll continue to enjoy them for another month or so.

It’s at this time of year when I most enjoy entertaining. I love inviting a few friends or some family members over for an informal visit. We’ll get together and have a barbecue or just a snack and a few drinks. Just a chance to get together – but of course it’s always in the garden surrounded by my lovely flowers and all the lovely scents they produce.

One quick and simple treat that I whip up when guests come over is cheese and crackers. I almost always have both cheddar cheese and a soft cheese on hand like Boursin Cheese and of course a variety of tasty crackers is always handy.

Do you do a lot of entertaining in the summertime? Do you keep supplies on hand for “drop in” guests? Supplies such as tasty spreadable cheeses like the Boursin cheeses discussed above or other quick foods?

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You see, we had my neighbors putting in a new fence on one side, and the neighbors on the other side don’t take care of their yard at all so there’s always weeds creeping into our yard from their side, so the month started out in battle mode and it didn’t look good.

I’m quite happy to report that after several weeks of giving our garden some tender loving care – ie lots of compost, mulch, planting new plants in the bare spots, making up my special alfalfa tea to fertilize the garden beds and so on … the plants are looking quite happy.

I’ve actually been out in the garden taking quite a few pictures in the last week, maybe an extra 200 pictures! You see we just got a new cellphone. It’s a Nokia N8 and it has a 12 mpg camera inside it and it takes fabulous pictures and video! I was going to post an HD video that I took with the phone in this post but for some reason I’m having trouble posting it to Youtube. Youtube keeps saying it’s going to take about five hours to upload a 7 minute video. Crazy! So for now … I’ll just post a few pictures and I’ll try to find a way to get my garden tour video in another post soon.

Here are some lovely White Petunias. I always put a few Petunias in hanging baskets near my bird feeders. They help attract more birds, even hummingbirds if I plant red or pink ones.

Another flower that’s blooming like crazy right now is this Octavia Hill Rose, isn’t it pretty?

My Lavender plants are just beginning to bloom. I believe I have 7 or 8 Lavender plants scattered throughout my garden beds. The ones in the sunniest spots are flowering the most right now, but the others will catch up quickly I’m sure.

I also have several Clematis vines in both my front and back yard garden beds. This lovely pink/red clematis flower is one that grows on a trellis at the front of my house. The plant climbs along the trellis about 12 feet up the wall. It’s beautiful when it’s in bloom.

What’s blooming in your garden this month? Is your garden just gorgeous right now? I know I’m loving mine at this time because I have so many roses in bloom that whenever I walk outside all I smell is lovely old rose fragrance. It’s beautiful.

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Summer is here and you more than likely have a week or two’s worth of holidays coming up.

Do you happen to live in one of these four Iconic American cities?  Naturally, not everyone can live in these four wonderful cities.  Heck, I don’t even live in the United States!  I live in Canada.

I can, however, say that I’ve been to Chicago and New York City and I absolutely loved both cities.  As stated in the information above each city has very distinct and memorable areas that are unique to each city.   I’d certainly love to visit Boston and San Francisco some day.

So what are you doing this summer?  Are you taking a road trip?  Driving to one of those wonderful cities for a week or two?

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It seems like this year is just speeding along. The holiday season is practically upon us what with Thanksgiving next week and Christmas less than 6 weeks away!

It’s time to start preparing for all of the holiday celebrations we might either be attending or put on in our homes.

I was looking at some of the recipes on the Jack Daniels page and I really like the sound of the Jack Frost cookies. Perhaps you’d like to visit the page and find a recipe that you’d like to try this holiday season?

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Wow I’m BAD. I run the Green Thumb Sunday meme and I haven’t done one since last November. Yep, bad bad bad meme creator!

Ok it’s time to get back on track. This meme is still alive … barely, but I know some of our members are still posting Green Thumb Sunday posts regularly, at least more regularly than I have been lately.

I don’t have a good excuse for my absence. As usual I haven’t been feeling well thanks to my Crohn’s, but yes, I’ve still been gardening and so far this year I’m amazed with my garden. I just need to start posting about what I’m seeing and doing more often, now don’t I?

So … if you’ve been participating in Green Thumb Sunday or waiting around to see if it was going to start up again … come on, let’s see some Green Thumb Posts. (please).

As I said above I’ve been amazed with my garden this year. I think it started waking up in February … way way early! By March 15th I had my first Crocuses blooming. Usually they don’t bloom until near the end of March.

This was the first crocus to bloom in my backyard this year. It bloomed on March 15th! Shortly thereafter more and more crocus popped up. They’re all done now though.

Years ago when I first started gardening I planted Snow Drops .. but I rarely ever saw them. Either they bloomed too early for me to notice or it warmed up to fast and they faded within days … unnoticed. It was obvious this year that they’ve been growing, multiplying and thriving as I had a few large clumps come up in March.

I even had a few tiny Dwarf Danfordia Irises come up too

They’re a little faded in this photo as they were already wilting by the time I noticed them. They didn’t last long. We’ve had some warm weather in March and April which wasn’t all that good for making Spring flowers last.

Here’s a shot of my center garden bed … full of red and white Tulips, Heuchera, Astilbe, perennial Geranium, and tiny shoots of Phlox and Hostas and probably a few other plants that I’m forgetting … I took this picture on April 18th. I just wish that I’d pushed the hoop that I use to contain the Phlox when it grows down a bit before I took the photo!

This is a wide shot of my garden. It’s small, but for the middle of April there’s a heck of a lot of plants up. All of my roses have fully leafed out now and more and more plants are coming up each day. Right now I’ve got Daffodils and Hyacinths that are just about finished blooming and I think my Glories of the Snow are pretty much gone. I have a feeling that I’ll have roses about two weeks earlier than usual this year too.

And Finally this is my dog, Midnight, enjoying some sun in the garden. She’s growing and blooming too. She’s two and a half years old now and still very puppy like in a lot of ways … just thankfully not quite as hyper as she was a year or so ago! LOL

How is your garden doing? What’s blooming? What’s growing?

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Can you believe that I still haven’t finished putting my garden to bed for the winter? Ok it’s not that bad … we only have a little bit of gardening work to do, but still … it’s almost the end of November and we could have our first snow fall any time!

We still have to cut down the sunflowers in the front boulevard. They are starting to look raggy and they need to come down. We also have a few plants that have died down that I should cut down as well, like the balloon flowers that have died down and who’s stems are now falling over onto our front walkway. LOL

Thanks to the much warmer than normal temps we had about two weeks ago (hey it reached 20 C (68 F) two or three days in a row) we have roses blooming! The Breath of Life climbing rose, both of our Iceberg roses, Octavia, Lavender Dreams, Baron Prevost and Jacques Champlain are all blooming. Full true roses!

They are lovely, but it’s a shame that they are blooming because it’s getting colder and I don’t doubt that we’ll have snow within a week or so.

Here’s a photo of Lavender dreams that I took a while ago. I still can’t believe that the plant is putting out more blooms even though it’s reached zero a few times in the last week.

Is anything still blooming in your garden as we approach winter?

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It was a beautiful weekend! I think we might have had a very late Indian Summer here in Toronto! The temps got up to 17 C or 63 F and tomorrow’s going to be warm for this time of year too.

Of course, the warmer weather probably isn’t doing my garden much good as it has been cool here for a few weeks and in a few days it will be cool again. Yep, the garden is pretty much shutting down for the winter.

I still have some roses that seem stuck in bloom and some rose buds that haven’t opened and that probably won’t, but most of my flowers are dying down.

About two weeks ago my New York Asters were in full bloom – now they are fading although there’s still some pale purple/ blue color on the plant.

Here’s what the flowers looked like when they are at the height of their bloom-

The pink salvia was also putting out new blooms – but they too are pretty much gone now as well.

My Liatris plants stopped blooming by late August or so, but they developed seed heads in September and October.

I collected the seeds off of some of the Liatris stocks and planted them in a few sparse areas of the garden. Perhaps in a year or two I’ll have more Liatris coming up in areas that desperately need some permanent plants.

Has your garden begun to shut down for winter?

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It’s hard to believe but November is here.

It’s starting to get colder and the leaves are falling off the trees and my garden plants. It’s time to start putting the garden to bed for the winter.

As far as gardening goes I dislike this time of year the most.

Yes I still have some flowers blooming, but it won’t be long before the first snow arrives and my garden will be awash in white. It’s a long wait until spring and new garden life – isn’t it?

In the last two weeks I’ve spent some time closing down the garden. Trimming plants and removing plants that have died down. We’ve put away our patio furniture and just this past weekend all the solar lights and torches were put away for winter. Tropical plants such as my Passion Flower vines, Hibiscus and Jasmine have all been brought inside as they can’t withstand our very cold winters here in Toronto.

There isn’t much left to do, other than cover the garden beds with tree leaves that have been falling heavily over the last few days. Soon the trees in the area will be bare – but their leaves will be protecting my garden beds.

I still have to cut down the sunflowers that I grow in the front boulevard …

They are still blooming and most look pretty good – but I know that won’t last. Perhaps next weekend we’ll chop them down … oh yes I mean chop, normal garden pruners just don’t do the job on Sunflowers thick stems.

Have you started getting your garden ready for the long winter? What do you do to prepare your garden?

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It seems that summer went by so fast and here we are at the second last day of summer! Did summer go by fast for you too?

Well either way, the garden is doing well. Roses, daisies, Asters, Sedum and many other plants are still blooming. Even my Hydrangea is still putting out a few blooms.

Our Raspberries are happy as well. They’re still producing berries! Just this afternoon my husband was out picking a small container of fresh raspberries off the plants. Yum. We’re just about to have them on some ice cream – double yum.

What’s blooming in your garden as we wind down to Autumn?

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