Tuesday, October 20, 2009

Fall in the Garden


Fall in my garden is a messy place. I lose interest in weeding by September. The deer have made a salad out of most of my plants. What is left is on its own.

The resilience of the plants is amazing. To the left is an old Mum plant, bought at Walmart on a whim, about three falls ago. I took it out of the pot, placed in the back garden (the one only we can see) and let it go.

The mum is no longer the nice orderly ball of flowers you see for sale at all the local supermarkets in the fall. It has spread all over the back garden in big sweeping masses, some touching the ground. It blooms twice a year; the spring and the fall. The color of the flowers has deepened, somehow. I can't kill this plant. And the deer leave it alone.

The shot to the left is that of my last remaining, uneaten, Anaheim hot pepper. We love hot peppers and grow two bushes of them a year. We have a successful Habenero plant, and this one, an Anaheim pepper plant. Poor plant. We probably had about ten growing peppers on it three weeks ago. One morning we noticed all the peppers, branches and most of the leaves were eaten (Deer, those varmits) off the plant. One lone pepper remains.

Oh, those lawn boys. Came around the corner in their ridearound mower and chopped down my birdbath. We had specially picked this birdbath about eight years ago, for its shallow depth and the center part, where little birds could perch ant get a drink. The lawn company promised to reimburse us for a new bath. Ever try to find a birdbath in the fall?



And the final sign of fall. My putty colored house is covered in these Oriental ladybugs. Covered. Thousands of them cling to the sunny front of the house during the day, and fly into the woods at night. Many escape into my house. We find them everywhere. They stink when you squish them, so we try to put them back outside. I wanted to get a shot of them swarming but got creeped out by them flying around my head and into my ears and all over me. Yuck.

What does your garden look like in the fall?

2 comments:

  1. What does mine look like in the fall? Dead. Ha!

    Great idea you have here. Since I'm dabbling in photography as well, I might have to steal your idea.

    *runs away giggling*

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  2. Our garden is leaf strewn and looking drowsy. We have one lone rose, some autumn crocus; we just brought in our last broccoli, eggplant, onions and beets. Mostly things seem to be settling down for the winter. I want to thank you for signing on to follow my blog. You are my 100th follower and I've been waiting for you for quite some time. You've made my day.

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