Run Turkey Run.....

Im all about any excuse to get together with family and friends to break bread. There is just something very special about sitting down to eat even something simple that solidify s relationships. Isn't that how we got our Thanksgiving celebration.... The offering of friendship. Well Canadian Thanksgiving is coming up here in a couple weekends. I keep telling the wild turkeys that wander into my yard to run!...

Friday I was a little short on "colour".... I wanted to save it for this Fridays fertilizer Friday over at Tootsie time but because she is having issues with her blog. As in, they deleted it!. Yep! Five years and 700 posts later...all gone..  Anyways I have decided to go a head and share all the beauty that I get to gaze on with my morning cup of tea. Roses.. still looking beautiful and standing out vibrantly 

I have to smile when Im blessed with a reblooming of plants that just shouldn't be blooming right now!.  Do you see the burgendy and yellow pansy in behind the iris.

The clumps of fall flowering Asters really are awesome. The surrounding yellow of the primroses has faded and they've been cut back.

Here we have the blue Caryopeteris and the yellow Trollis along with another clump of the Aster

ornamental crab apples 

Potentilla is still blooming along the rock wall

Can you see the blue rosette at the base of the elephant ears.. I do not know the name of the plant. I have a big pot of them though that after flowering during the winter I cut back. It started a whole bunch of new rosettes and a couple as they grew I removed and put into soil. Now I need to dig them up and put them into pots for the winter.

There are areas throughout the garden that are still looking amazing

I normally do not put a lot of annuals in my gardens. I put this red Celosis in before the last garden tour along with some Solidago. The Solidago has long since faded but look at this colour. Im thinking I need my own little greenhouse to start my annuals for next year.

Phlox and Sedum. This Phlox with my help deadheading it has been blooming since middle of July!

This bi coloured butterfly bush is a real butterfly magnet in the butterfly garden. Far more so then any of the other so called butterfly attracting perennials.

A view of the butterfly garden from the road. Standing between the carpet roses and here. If I turn around you are going to see the carpet roses...

Look at all the colour on the carpet roses... Im actually thinking of moving these up onto the berm so that we can see more of them. At the moment we really only see them when we drive into our property.

The climbing rose keeps putting out clusters of blooms and has been a lot more substantial this year then last year.

I hope you have enjoyed your walk today. Every hour I can steal away and spend enjoying my garden is very precious to me. I even have friends who are dealing with a lot of personal drama that I have invited to walk the garden or just come and sit on the deck. Its amazing how the calmness soaks into my bones and my the tension eases...Im hoping that they can feel some of that therapeutic benefit from being in my sanctuary.

Do you have a place that gives you comfort...that you find peace? All of us need just such a place.

I for one feel very blessed to of found ours. 

Its already come to my attention that some of the bloggers have gotten quiet.... Im thinking of putting together something that we would all link up for you questions that you other wise may not post about but would get you thinking about what worked... what didn't... what will you do differently next year. etc... stay tuned! If there is something you would like us to discuss please drop me a line and I will include it!

Thanks for dropping by... please leave me a note so I know you have been and please do come again!

Kate

Missing Tootsietime.com and others? heres why....

Just a special note for all of us who look forward to Glendas posts over at Tootsie time..
Somehow something went wrong and her domain is saying that she doesn't have it anymore!...
this means that she may have to start all over again!.. 5 years and over 700 posts maybe lost...
She is currently working with Google to see what they can do to help with this. Lets hope that they can. Apparently she is not the only one experiencing this!..
Tootsie will be back... stay tuned.

Kate

Welcoming Autumn...

Where have I been...... I've missed the whole last week of linking up for Blogtember... 

I missed linking up with Glenda over at Tootsie Time!... All I can say is that I have been busy with buyers and with closings and listing new listings!. Office meetings welcoming a new broker and  working with marketing. 

I even gardened. cleaned my house. Took a friend into Grand Rapids for a doctors appointment after reconstruction surgery so driving is not easy for her!. I even went to a balloon festival which you will hear more about in another post.

Its been misty in the mornings here. Visibility for drivers has been down to as little as 10 feet!. Then the sun comes out and the clean crisp air of  Autumn is very welcoming. I however have not been able to get out into the garden nearly as much as I would of wished.

 I didn't capture the mist as well as I would of liked too. I love the mist. I like the feeling of it on my face.. probably a left over from living in Great Britian. I think it makes the garden enchanting. I'd love to be clever enough to know how to capture the images I would love to photograph in my garden with the mist.

 This time of year there are still actually a lot of flowers to behold. However this post will not showcase them. Its going to be more about the contrasting textures, shapes and colours of the plants in my garden and how the fall has just enhanced their beauty with the changing colours and seed heads and pods...

 There are plants that I could be cutting back. I actually have taken out 8 huge wheel barrel loads.  I cut it all back way too early last year and Im hesitate to do the same this year. I do have some major overhauls to do again... How about you? Did you get some inspiration of areas that needed to be reworked or perhaps didn't work.. Mine hit me tonight as I was out making water wells around the new trees..... 

 This clematis is absolutely gorgeous.. Its laying over the holly. The contrast of the clematis leaves agaisnt the thick shiny dark green of the holly on its own is beautiful. The flowers look wonderful though.

 The fruit on the ornamental tree by the pond is a show stopper. You can even see the jewels I hung on the tree last fall once the leaves had fallen. They have been hidden all summer with the thick leaves.

 Chocolate Joe pye is fully blooming and I finally got a picture that shows the true colour of this Sedum.

 This is a good shot showing how I place my foliage so that even when there isn't any flowers there is still something to please the eye.

 Contrasting textures of leaves along with colour and then bloom shapes .

 I try to make sure that contrast in colour but also in shape and size is present

The Heuchera is looking a lot happier this year. Last year it had thick woody stems sticking out and I cut it back and buried it deeper!

 This is the time of year when the grasses start taking center stage. It looks pretty all on its own but covered in water droplets or with the sun shining through it ...it takes on a whole new look

 The moon garden is holding its own....

 The pond is even looking different with "whites" taking a bigger part of the action along with the different foliage's rather then the brighter colours that are usually to be seen

 Stems with bright burgundy colour really stand out.

 This blue is absolutely eye catching..

This Aconitum is a bit in the shade. When I cut it back to keep it from blooming before my garden tour...well, that was a mistake! Its only now trying to get enough energy to bloom. What did happen however is that each of the three plants have really put up a lot more stems and next year its going to be an impressive clump.

 In this partical shade the blue Phlox is really looking "blue"... which picks up the blue of the blue spruce.

 Seed pods from the butterfly weed still in tack. I unfortunately have not seen any caterpillars munching on their favorite seed heads.. perhaps they will still show up.

This is not the best picture.... It shows a purple leaf sand cherry and a new coneflower whos name escapes me at the moment... Next year I picture both being far more spectacular and then contrasting delightfully agaisnt the thick puffy leaves of the hydrangea and the sharp needles of the blue spruce.

This time of year there is even beauty in the silence of a lone water droplet

The light is very different this time of year.. Its lower and therefore the shades or streams of light through the trees are different. Here you can see the barerooted hostas that were planted this spring. They really grew but this is a part of the garden that the irrigation does not reach.

 I love this picture... this was a very bare dry area last year... 

 Lady tresses.... I bought these simply for their name! shameful.....

 A volunteer rose of sharon.... where to move it is the question.. I try to give away plants I don't want rather then pull them out and discard them so for now I will put it over in the holding bed.

 You can see there are flowers still.. that the foliage is still very thick.

 The pond is pretty much in shade for the entire day. 

 last year I grew heritage tomatos in pots up on the deck... this is a tomato that obviously fell and seeded itself... once the fruit ripens  we will see exactly which variety it is..

 Some areas are looking scruffy but if there is colour.... I hate to do anything that will take away from it..

This area I thought of as a secret garden... then added flowers and it became a butterfly garden area... tonight I decided that I want to change it yet again... I had to open up the area for the butterfly plants to get enough sun.. so now Im going to take it back to less maintenance and put the butterfly plants in an area where I can see them easier.

 This time of year even the stocks of the grasses have amazing colour. 

 The grasses capturing the light

 add water droplets and a bit of motion....wow... the rustleing sound competes with the waterfall.

 These heads are stretching to the tops of the spruce.

Its hard to believe that living in Alberta I just did not get the whole "ornamental grass" thing... most of the grasses that will winter over just looked like... well... grass!. so when I moved here and the grass started to grow I thought... okay. wait and see. Are they not beautiful.

So this was my catch up... What did you do this weekend. Did you volunteer and serve at your church.. reach out and help a neighbour. Take in a fall activity. Or perhaps you were able to just stay home and enjoy some of what surely must be the last days, weeks of enjoying our gardens..

Whatever you did... I hope you did it with all your heart. You invested some soul into it.

Thank you for stopping by my garden.. please leave me a message so I know that you have been. 

Kate