Please join me while we take a last peek at summer and enjoy the first signs of fall….no pumpkin spice or mums involved!
Let’s say goodbye to the flowers first. The petunias fared well with all that rain.
The dinner plate hibiscus are always late to the party, but they are like Beyonce, they make such a statement when they finally arrive that nobody minds.
The Rose of Sharon was so full of flowers it bowed down to Mother Nature.
But the morning glories were not so glorious, lots of foliage draped over the back fence but no buds in sight.
They were very late last year so I still have hope, but here’s a link to last years (unpublished blog), A Glorious September Morning, plus a bee having his last drink of the summer.
The nectar of the gods
My mother always grew glads and zinnias in the farm garden, but this year my glads were a disaster both in color and form. My vision of them lining the back fence like little pink soldiers faded into the sporadic appearance of a spike of pale lavender or orange. Lavender is okay, and peach I could handle, but I dislike orange, and pale orange is even worse. Is it too much to expect the color on the box is the color you get?
Next year I’ll just buy some at the farmer’s market.
I have never had any luck growing zinnias but my neighbors were prolific,
and the water lilies in their pond finally bloomed.
The sunflowers are drooping but are decorative enough for a vase.
Sunflowers in a Vase
The lavender was late as I replanted it all in the spring, but it still bloomed if not extravagantly.
The hot humid rainy summer produced a rain forest jungle of a vegetable garden which desperately needs sorting out. More on the potager in another blog, after the harvest.
Where are the monkeys?
The monarchs have all flown south, except this little guy with an injured leg/wing who I rescued from a parking lot. He was able to crawl a bit so I brought him home to lie among the lavender.
This year I have seen more monarchs than I have in years. After the township sprayed all the ditches, they almost became extinct, but now that gardeners are planting milkweed again, they are slowly making a comeback. They tend to congregate in Point Pelee Park in southern Ontario on their annual migration route, before crossing Lake Erie to the US and eventually Mexico. Tens of thousands cluster to rest and wait for the right wind conditions to cross the 40 km stretch of lake – the park posts the daily monarch counts on it’s social media pages. One picture is of a friends backyard near the lake, and one is a weather-watcher picture of Point Pelee. I wonder how such a small creature can make such a long journey? For more information on monarchs, check out garden blogger Invitation to the Garden‘s wonderful post on The King of Butterflies. She also has posts about the different kinds of milkweed you can plant to attract butterflies.
just dropping in to say goodbye
Rendevous at Point Pelee Park
Our last look at the beach, and my favorite photo of this summer.
Beach Day
Our first look at fall, the maple leaves they are a changing….
The chestnuts are starting to fall from the trees near the library. Chestnuts always bring back memories of gathering them on my grandmother’s farm at Thanksgiving. Last year one of the librarians made the nicest wreath from chestnuts…..nothing I would attempt as I’m sure it involved lots of glue.
The crab-apples are ripening and getting ready to drop and annoy all the grass cutters.
The first of the apples are being harvested. We stopped at an orchard last week and they had Galas and Mac’s just picked that morning, a bumper crop.
The scarecrow festival has started with a large party in the town square.
The crunch of dry leaves underfoot and the smell of wood smoke reminds us summer is winding down. The days are growing shorter, it’s getting dark by 7:30, time to go inside, light the candles and welcome fall. And if you are in the mood to feather your nest check out last years (unpublished) Autumn Decor blog for some cozy fall ideas.
Fall Flowers
There will be a harvest moon on Sept 24, so here’s some music for a fall night. This song is about as jazzy as I get but it has great lyrics and it always reminds me of my student days and walking home through a park after pub crawling….not sure anyone would do that now in downtown Toronto, they’d probably be mugged or shot.
Song of the Day: Moondance by Van Morrison
“Well, it’s a marvelous night for a moondance
With the stars up above in your eyes
A fantabulous night to make romance
‘Neath the cover of October skies
And all the leaves on the trees are falling…”
thehomeplaceweb 
A great post! Your pictures are beautiful. We noticed an increase in monarchs here this summer and it did coincide with in increase in milkweed as well. This summer I realized that milkweed flowers have a lovely fragrance and I also was also surprised to see some of our honey bees foraging them. They are more than just a weed. 🙂
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Lovely pictures. We are encouraged in the UK to be bee and butterfly friendly is it the same in Canada? I always choose bee and/or butterfly friendly plants these days. My garden has been ignored for a couple of years so it looks a little overgrown, however we’ve seen an increase in birds because of it.
I love a gala apple I’d love to visit an orchard – I can’t do without apples.
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Great photos!
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Your photos are beautiful – ha, ha … you spotlighted Summer and I spotlighted Fall. Your flower pictures are beautiful, especially your collection of pinks. The Monarch butterfly – sad and I hope he makes it a little longer at your place. I was amazed at the Monarchs at the Park yesterday and I’ve never seen it before. I had a butterfly garden back in 2010 and got a few Monarchs a day for the Butterfly Bush and they liked the pinky-purple coneflowers. Might have had more if I had milkweed I think. I lost most of my flowers – all the perennials and just rosebushes remaining after the first Polar Vortex in early 2014. Lost even the hardy butterfly bushes and I was so disgusted I refused to replant anything. My paradise is now paradise lost. Those Monarchs on the migration path at Point Pelee are just amazing – I would like to see that one day. I got all excited for the few I saw yesterday where I always walk. I posted a picture of a horse chestnut tree about a month ago. I’d never seen one before and asked people why kind of fruit was on this tree. A few people knew and I’ve been watching it to see what happens when it ripens – guess they’ll drop on the ground like the ones in your picture. I liked “Moondance” and meant to say I liked “September Morn” when I first followed your site. I’ve always liked Neil Diamond. I grew up listening to “Harvest Moon” by Mitch Miller … I probably could still sing it by heart if I really tried.
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Mitch Miller….that’s an oldie! My dad always used to listen to him when we were kids. I have never had roasted chestnuts but horse chestnuts are not the kind you eat as they are toxic. I’m going to gather some today (as the windstorm brought tons down) and the librarian has given me instructions on how to make a chestnut wreath. The monarch died, as I suspected he would, but I put him in a jar for my mom to paint, as she was doing a painting of the monarchs on the bush.
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I grew up listening to Mitch Miller and Jim Reeves mostly, plus a few country music singers, the real-deal, old-time country music singers like Hank Williams, Hank Snow and Patsy Cline. I kind of like that twang from Hank Williams, Sr. when he belted out his songs. Every Sunday my father played those albums on the stereo and you could hear it all over the house. I’ve never had roasted chestnuts either though I can recall seeing vendors selling hot chestnuts when I worked in downtown Detroit. A chestnut wreath would be nice – I was so struck how big what I thought the fruit was on that tree. That’s unfortunate about the monarch, but likely he’d not have made the journey given his injured leg. Hopefully you’ll feature that monarch painting on your blog, so we can see it (and think Summer).
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What a delightful post to say “so long ’til next spring” to your garden. And a THANK YOU for boosting my site! I appreciate that. Since my posts on butterflies, I’ve been seeing a lot of other posts, like yours, featuring the monarch. Mine have fluttered away to Southern California and probably are well on their way to their winter hibernation in Mexico. They have to be there by Dios de la Muerto.
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Thank you for helping to hang on to the long,warm days as long as possible. The stores (and Starbucks, of course) are already pushing everything pumpkin and spice. Can’t we just wait until fall? Believe I even heard something about “holiday shopping” on the radio. Nuts to all that – it’s still summer.
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I was in the dollar store today and they were unpacking Christmas decorations???? and Halloween is still over a month away…..
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Those Monarch butterfly pictures are amazing! I’ve never seen anything like it in my life!!
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