cosmos

My garden is getting it’s Fall colors

It looks like my garden is beginning to get it’s fall colours. I believe my roses are starting to go through their last bloom of the year … wait, what am I talking about – my roses often bloom right up until Christmas!

Nah … well my Browned Eyed Susans and Phlox David are certainly on the way out, however, just as those plants are winding down, others are beginning to shine.

For example, my Toad Lilies are covered in buds and I expect I’ll have blooms next week. I’ll also have blooms on my three Monkshood in the next week or two as well.

My Sedum are already changing color and looking lovely:

The large potted Chrysanthemums that I purchased at Costco at the end of August are blooming away too:

Aren’t they lovely?

My Cosmos have been blooming all summer, but this one looked so pretty the other day and it happened to have a bug on one of it’s petals as well – can you spot it?

How is your garden doing this month? Is it changing as the temperatures change? Tell me what’s blooming.

Ugh dead mouse in the garden

by Tricia

My husband has the day off work today and earlier this afternoon he suggested that we go outside into the backyard and just sit in the garden at our Patio table. Needless to say my laptop comes out with me when we do this (although the glare from the sun sure makes it hard to see!).

We’d done a little work in the garden the evening before and my husband had just cut the lawn prior to our visit to the garden this afternoon.

Shortly after I entered the garden I noticed that my dog was rolling around in the grass. I thought it was just because the lawn was freshly cut so I went over to pet her … and much to my disgust I saw a tail attached to a very rotted half mouse. EWWWWWWWWwwww.

I think my dog rolled in it! She doesn’t seem dirty or to have anything disgusting on her, but I’m pretty sure that she was rolling in the grass in that particular area because of the dead mouse. Labs are particularly fond of rolling in dead animals and other disgusting stuff.

I guess we’ll give her a bath later when we go inside. Now that’s a chore and a half.

I just hope that nobody put poison down and caused the mouse to die … ’cause if my dog tasted that mouse we might have a very sick dog on our hands!

Once the mouse was disposed of I brought my camera out and started taking pictures of the garden and some of the flowers that are currently blooming.

The flowers in bloom include white phlox, Climbing Iceberg Rose, Climbing Parade Rose, Compte de Chombord rose, Cleomes, Brown eyed Susans, a couple of Cannas, Malva, the Honey Suckle vine, Black Hollyhocks, Climbing Westerland rose, Baron Prevost Rose, Pink Salvia, Blue Salvia, Portulacas, Fuchsia, Gaillardia, Breath of Life Climbing rose, Valencia rose, Sedum, Petunias, Impatiens, Sweet William, Snapdragons and Balloon flowers. Then in the front there were several roses blooming – Climbing Eden, Standard Iceberg Rose, Yves Piaget Romatica Rose, Lavender Dreams, Bonica, The fairy and some others, plus Sunflowers, Cosmos and Morning Glory.

It sounds like there’s lots of roses in bloom from my list above, but that’s only about a third of my rose collection and of the roses that are blooming – some only have a few blooms while others like the Fairy and Bonica are covered in blooms.

Hopefully this evening I’ll have some time to upload and process the pictures that I took this afternoon and I’ll post them to this blog sometime this week.

What’s blooming or growing in your garden this week?

BTW Weather wise … can you believe that September has turned out to be warmer than July? Yeah … July was cold for these parts and September so far has just been a little warmer than average. Isn’t the weather getting stranger and stranger?

Cool and dry in Toronto – a strange gardening season

by Tricia

I don’t know what’s going on, but this summer is just a non-starter here in Toronto.

We’re several degree’s below the normal average this month and it’s been cloudy and overcast for most of June and July. Plus … even though most days forecast rain, we’ve only had a little bit in our area … well, up until last night and today that is!

You might remember that I started this growing season talking about how we were having a warmer than normal early spring and how my plants were ahead by two to three weeks … yeah, well forget that now! I’d say most of my plants are behind by two weeks now.

My roses have only flowered once and are slow to develop new buds this month (although a few roses have had some repeat blooms).

The sunflowers … they’re only maybe three feet high and haven’t really developed flower heads yet!

The cosmo’s, cleomes, daisies etc are just beginning to bloom … sporadically.

I have green tomatoes on the plants, but they don’t seem to be growing all that much … and my cherry tomatoes and tiny toms have totally stalled and have yet to produce any tomatoes! I can usually count on my tiny tomatoes before my regular sized ones!

I barely saw any strawberries in June … of course it’s possible that the birds, squirrels and even my dog might have got to them before me! We do have raspberries that are starting to mature now though … so maybe with this rain and hopefully some true summer heat (next week?) the berries and all the flowers will come along.

Actually I’m sure the rain will help – as I said it’s been dry in our area … even though I know it’s rained in other areas of Toronto … still the weather people say we’ve had a lot less rain than we normally do in July as well … so it’s cool and dry.

How are things in your area? Is your garden a little behind because of cool weather or is your garden delightful?

Ugh dead mouse in the garden

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