September 2008

While there is still plenty of colours in the yard by the time September rolls around, some of these do not come from flowers but from the first signs of senescence, an indicator fall and winter are not far off any longer. Most of the Hostas are starting to go brown at the edges, as are the lilies. But as you can see in this picture the Fuchsias are still going gangbusters and the Begonias in the baskets don't know when to quit.

The flowering of the Tricyrtis -in this case 'Blue Wonder'- is another indicator fall is just around the corner. The plant itself is rather non-descript but the flowers are quite special, albeit on the diminutive side.

The water feature -the old Beatty washing machine- did rather well for us this year, we still have 10 fish in it and those goldfish do have a bit of a habit of eating the roots of the water lettuce we have in it. So, even though it is rather late in the season, we opted to put in another water hyacinth for some more plant material and some more roots for them to nibble on. When we got to the fish place it turned out they had all their water plants on at half price, so we picked one that was in bloom. I'd never seen a water hyacinth flower and it's quite nice, don't you think?

It may have taken most of the season, but the divisions of Heuchera 'Key Lime Pie' we did early in the spring are finally starting to leaf out decently.