November 2008

We're almost at Remembrance Day, it's Nov 9th, and we had a decent weather day today, after seeing virtually naught but rain all week. You can tell by all the fallen Wysteria leaves that fall's here in earnest, and the observant ones will ask what that umbrella is doing over the washing machine.

It's like this: the washing machine has been used all spring and summer as a water feature with about 10 goldfish in it. Goldfish prefer their water more towards the hard side of neutral and if we let too much rain water fall into the washing machine the water will get too acidic quite quickly. On top of that if the water rises too high the proper functioning of the pump is impeded, so, the need for some form of cover is apparent. The umbrella was just a convenient way of dealing with that need.

While fall's all around us, there are still splashes of colour to be found. This time it's one of our Fuchsia shrubs that still shows plenty of bloom.

This Hellebore is always the first one to flower for us, usually the first bloom opens up the last week of the year. As you can see there are plenty of buds. Unfortunately the last 3 or 4 years most of the flowers have fallen victm to a gourmant rodent -rat- and I'm keeping my fingers crossed the apparent lack of a rat right now will stay that way.

The Silver Sage presents itself quite strikingly this time of year, in particular on those cold, crisp fall mornings when there's frost around. The texture of the leaves is almost asphalt-like in this cropped section of one of the leaves you see in the picture below.