A close up of a pine tree branch.

I love the smell of real pine and crushed pine needles. Did you know you can make a tea out of pine needles? It has an interesting taste!

I don’t know why but I enjoy seeing how plants change once cool weather arrives. Cat tails and Milkweed puff out and their seeds blow through fields and meadows, flowers turn to seed heads and of course, the leaves on the trees change from green to red, orange, gold and yellow.

While we may regret the loss of summer, Autumn can be a beautiful time of year if we just take a moment to enjoy it.

Here in Toronto, right by the Don Valley Parkway in Taylor Creek Park there are these huge natural water filtration devices. I’ve always thought that they look a little bit like elephants.

My husband was talking with one of our neighbors earlier today and someone they started talking about these filters. He calls them the “Teeth” and I guess they do look like big teeth too, don’t they?

I not only grow plants in several raised garden beds in my front and back yards, but I also have hanging baskets and planters filled with summer flowers such as Petunias, Stock, Impatiens and occasionally I’ll plant some lovely Dianthus or Sweet William among the annuals.

The photo above is a picture of lovely Sweet William flowers growing in a hanging basket. The Petunia’s had long since died off, but the Dianthus was still going strong.

I take my flower baskets down for winter and store them by the side of the house or on the patio, but because the baskets are small and shallow any perennials that are planted in them rarely make it through winter .. however, some like Sweet William will reseed and I should have Sweet William growing in that basket again come next summer.

Compte de Chambord, was there ever another rose with such a heavenly scent?

Some of my roses are still blooming away at this late date. I suspect that the Compte de Chambord rose bud pictured above is one of the last that this rose will produce this year, but I could be wrong. Either way it’s a lovely rose bud isn’t it and oh it smells … so beautiful with it’s rich rose perfume.

I took this photo on a windy day in lat October. I believe I was holding the rose stem to keep it still as I snapped the shot which of course is why the background has an interesting blurred effect - the foliage of the other plants near the rose were blowing in the wind.

This is my first year with Hydrangea in the garden. Earlier this year when the plant started to bloom each cluster of flowers was half blue and half pink. It was like the plant couldn’t decide which color it should be. I’ve since heard that newly planted Hydrangeas will often be bi-colored in their first year or so. Of course the PH of the soil can also help to determine whether you’ll have blue or pink flowers if you have a hydrangea that can be either color.

By late summer my Hydrangea’s had decided that they were pink hydrangeas and now that Autumn has arrived the petals have turned a deep rose pink. Lovely! Yes I know the petals are starting to fade as the plant dies down for winter, but I just wanted to show you their gorgeous fall color.

Do you grow Hydrangeas? If so, what kind do you grow?

It’s November and the flowers and plants are finally starting to die down in my garden. Starting to prepare to sleep during the winter under a bed of snow.

The seed heads above are of Rudbeckia - or the flowers more commonly called Black Eyed Susans. These lovely yellow daisy like flowers bloom from Late July or early August right up until October or so, then they develop the seed heads that you see in the above photograph.

Since Black eyed Susans are known as fall flowers you know winter is near when they finally begin to die down.

My garden is surprising me this year. Many of my flowers are still blooming even though it’s November and getting quite cold here in Toronto.

I took this photo of a Toadlily last weekend. Blooming in all of it’s speckled glory. It’s a shame that they only bloom in the fall and likely don’t get as much notice as they would if they bloomed in the height of summer.

I took this photo a couple of years ago when I noticed that one of my neighbors had really gone all out decorating their front yard. I took a series of pictures that year and then went on to do a marathon of Halloween picture posts, posting photographs every two or three hours on October 31, 2006 until I’d completed posting the series of photos. This is one of my favorites from the Halloween series.

I took this photo of the Toronto Skyline about a year ago while on a Toronto Dinner boat cruise. The sun was just starting to set behind the CN Tower and it was a beautiful sight.

As you can probably tell I applied a sepia effect to the photograph. I also experimented with some of the photos of the skyline in Black and white as well, but I think I like the sepia effect best, next to the natural full color shot of course.