Sunday Stroll - Each in its Turn

While the dill in the orchard garden is already in bloom, in the front garden the bronze fennel is still emerging where last year's seeds fell.


In the vegetable garden, the Potimarron Squash is still putting out new blooms, as the earlier blooms begin to form fruit.

Star-shaped pumpkin blossoms are becoming pale spherical "baby" pumpkins.

Amid white flowers, tiny thin green beans are already forming, but the cucumbers are still only in the flowering stage.

Tomatoes are covered in both yellow blossoms and green globes.

Heads of broccoli, blue-green and getting large, are almost ready to harvest.

The zinnias, sedate in bud, will soon be a riot of green and pink at the north end of each row in the vegetable garden.

In the butterfly garden, the last of the orange day-lilies are blooming, as the tiger lilies begin their reign as the brightest orange in the garden.

The first Star Gazer lily, her color somewhat subdued this year, has opened near the brilliant blue butterfly delphinium.

Along the wild edges of our property, Joe-Pye Weed, taller and more subtle in color than the chicory which has dominated the uncultivated areas for weeks, is emerging.

When it feels like there is a "lull" in the garden, I have to look a little closer and I find that the "grand show", as John Muir called it, continues. Always, it continues.

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all photos by Aisling, Sunday, August 2, 2008

Sunday Stroll - Wild Harvest

The subdued tones of autumn, the mellow golds and brittle browns, may look like things are dying for the year, but as I took my walk yesterday afternoon what I saw all around was life replenishing itself. Stalks of tall grass were dropping seed into the creek bed and milkweed pods were swelling with their own downy seeds. Ripe grapes and viburnum berries, rose hips and thistle seed offered a feast to wild creatures, while ensuring their own abundant return.

photo by Haiku 1) Praying Mantis photos by Aisling: 2) Wild Grapes 3) Green Milkweed Pod 4) the seeds of a wild creek grass 5) thistle 6) rose hips 7) wild purple asters

Sunday Stroll - Autumn Arrives...

I usually buy one new variety of mum each year, unless a friend gifts me with some. Taking these photos this morning, I realized that I didn't have any orange mums, so I bought an orange mum called "warm igloo" (not in any of the photos) this afternoon at the nursery. I also bought two orange crocosmias. I guess it was my day to add orange to the garden. All I need now is a few pumpkins on the porch.

photos by Aisling, 1) Echo Bronze Mum 2) red mums 3) last year's red mum 4) pink mums transplanted from my sister-in-law's garden 5) yellow "Dendranthema" mums 6) another red mum 7) violet-pink mums shared by a family friend 8) little yellow mum purchased as a $1 bargain plant late last autumn, growing with blue veronica.