Ted needed my help on a project in the garden this morning. We waited for a window of time between rainfalls. Oooohhh!! Rain. There should be some interesting things to see today in the October gardens.
Still some ever-bearing raspberries if you look hard. Can you see the leaf damage done by the Japanese beetles this summer? I am surprised the plants put out fall raspberries.
No frost yet means that we still have spinach, lettuces, herbs and pollinator flowers. The kale will take a lot of frost and should be fine until Christmas or later. Same with carrots.
Even though I still don't know the name of this little pollinator flower, I know that it likes cooler weather. It's been blooming happily now that the hot weather is over.
Same with California poppies. They seem to like the cooler temperatures. They had pretty much stopped blooming in August, but the fall weather gave them new energy. Look at those raindrops!
I've never grown Cardinal flowers before. Once they started blooming, they kept up all summer. Every week, I snipped off many branches for floral arrangements. They are the plant that keeps on giving.
So, there's Ted's garden project. I hope the blueberries realize how much we've done for them over the past 10 years. It was so disappointing to have one row eaten down to soil level by rabbits last winter. Not going to happen this year, bunnies! Ted is going to put metal fencing around the structure. Metal fencing, bunnies!!!
We'll need to live to 100 to recoup our costs.
Closeup, aren't blueberry leaves beautiful in the fall? Very little insect damage.
Not only will the blueberries be protected from animals. I've waited too long to get this Redbud tree to let it be destroyed by deer or rabbits this winter.
Looks like some clean-up needs to be done in the ponds. Not one frog to be seen this morning.
Just because there were not frogs doesn't mean there wasn't anything interesting. Every so often the wind blew through the tree branches over the pond. Drops of water fell. Bubbles happened. Do you see the bubbles? And, do you see the circular ripples on the water surface?
And, there's our sponsor, the sound of big raindrops falling on the pond.
It is so interesting how water holds itself together when going around objects. Can you see all of those thin lines where the water curves up around the centre leaf? Tensile strength. So cool.
You'd think that growth would come to a stop at this time of year. I'll try and remember to check this emerging mushroom out tomorrow. It looks like it will have a white circle on its top.
I saw some little birds flitting around the seed-heads of the rudbeckia and coneflowers. Before looking for them, I zoomed closer to the chrysanthemum.
Nice reflections! Do you see them? Keep scrolling.
I believe this is the female American Goldfinch. She looks a little disheveled, doesn't she. And, do you see the two black seeds in her beak? We'll leave those seed-heads just as they are until springtime. The American Goldfinches love the perennial bed. That's the only place we see them.
Lates season blooms on the dahlias were catching a few raindrops too.
As were the crab apples. You never know when you'll get your next bath.
“You expected to be sad in the fall.
Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees
and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintery light.
But you knew there would always be the spring,
as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen.
When the cold rains kept on and killed the spring,
it was as though a young person died for no reason.”
Ernest Hemingway
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