end of season...

I've noticed that some people cut their hostas (and other plants) down way before now...I happen to like the colors that the hostas turn at this time of the year.  When we start raking in a couple of weeks, the hostas will be much easier to pull out - plus they've had all their nutrients stored (or at least that's what I believe).

In this photo is a Japanese Maple and a Burning Bush...you can hardly tell them apart, they are so close in color right now.

In this shot you see Cosmos in the front, followed by Dahlias, Burning Bush, Japanese Maples (these ones turn orange) and the Magnolia tree.

Finally, these are some nice yellow mums that I had purchased in the spring as a decoration for my brothers 50th Birthday Party that we held at our house.  They added a nice little pop of color in the early spring, when only the early tulips were blooming. 

I replanted them in the front of the house.  The weather was so drought like that I thought they were goners...but they survived and they are blooming!  When the buds start, they are a reddish-orange, but the flowers are a nice bright yellow.

Still need to plant a bunch of bulbs and purchase and plant a bunch of boxwoods...then it's resting time until next February/March.

a month ago...

It's starting to get cold here.  I knew that we'd have an early "drop" and it seems that I'm correct.  It's surprising how many leaves have fallen already.

We've had such a dry summer, but fall is pretty wet so far.  In fact, our grass is starting to grow back.

Anyway, here are some pictures I took a month ago of some of the blooming flowers.  I'm hoping to see more of this for the rest of the month...as in "no frost".

It's about time to plant some bulbs.

dinner plate dahlias...

Look at the size of this dahlia!!!I told Jerome not to look goofy for the photo because it was going on the blog, but I guess he wanted to look goofy anyway...

The flower is bigger than his face!

garage demo is affecting my garden...

So, not only have I had to remove, store and rearrange many plants in my garden but the workers are stepping on, leaning heavy construction equipment against and killing some plants.

In an earlier post I had written about my Chicago Peace Roses - well, as of yesterday evening, they are GONE!

Yesterday the walls were being poured for the garage and they had a huge cement truck in the yard. I guess the workers either don't care or don't look where they are stepping - cuz BOTH of those rose bushes were stepped on and totally trampled.

We've also been told that more boulders will need to be moved, because they've had to move the location of the garage to the west another 2 feet, so that means that if I'm interested in keeping the plants in that area, I will have to move them to a "safe" place. I thought where I had moved the Chicago Peace roses WAS a safe place, but apparently I was way wrong.

They also moved my purple dahlia, which is in a container. But they moved it to a place where it was going to be really easy to hit as they move around the yard.

Our bill for this garage keeps growing - so I said to Jerome last night, "should I keep track of all the plants that they kill so that they can replace them at their cost?"

Am I being petty?

beauty in chaos...

One thing you can count on; the flowers will bloom...

The yard is a complete MESS!!! But in the middle of all that chaos, the dahlias are starting to bloom. These are Dinner Plate Dahlias.

This year I planted most of them in containers and those are the ones that are doing the best. I planted 20; 10 from last year that I stored over the winter and 10 new from Brecks.The scarlet one is called 'Garden Wonder'.
The purple one is called 'Thomas Edison'.
This one is considered white and it is called 'Fleurel'.
This one is yellow and it's name is 'Kelvin Floodlight' - funny thing, I used to go to school with a Kevin Flood and so, the name reminds me of him.

The only color that is missing at the moment is the orange. That one is called 'Mrs. Eileen'.