fall blooms - pt four

Another beautiful day - although quite a bit of wind this afternoon. We started taking the dock out this morning - and after two sections (out of nine), Mark asked if I still had the number I'd seen on a sign advertising dock removal. We have a ton of toys and all of the work that goes with them - and we ALWAYS do that work ourselves - so this was HUGE!!!! The guy came out about an hour later and had the rest of the dock out in about another hour. Boy, was that nice!! And easy!! It also made both Mark and me feel old, old, old - it would have taken us hours working together. sigh

I started moving my compost over the weekend and am over halfway done. It goes pretty fast once I start, so a few more hours and that job will be done. Then I have to shred a few more leaves that have fallen into the yard, and that job will be done too. I think we may be close to running out of jobs!!

But not yet - I still have all those lovely tulip bulbs to plant. And my dahlias are still in the gardens - blooming away - and I really hate to cut them back when they look so beautiful. But if I'm going to save them, I think I'd better do it soon. From what I've read, I need to cut them to about 6 inches - and then a week later I can dig them up, dry them, and store for the winter.

This was my first time planting dahlias, and I have been simply delighted with how gorgeous they are and how many blooms I've had. Very fun.

a lot of stuff blooming!

Finally getting caught up with all the photos I've been taking the last week or so! In the coming days, I want to show you overviews of all my gardens - most of them are looking really pretty right now - but wanted to kind of catch up with individual blooms first. So, here we go!

I have iron window boxes hanging on the fence between the house/patio and the driveway. Two are in sun and planted alike. This is one of them: now that the petunias are draping over the front and back, they're looking the way I envisioned them back in May.

This is rudbeckia "Herbstonne" - it has a wonderful bright yellow flower, and the plant is over 6 feet tall. Yarrow - I used to have a lot of this, but then it kind of disappeared for a few years, and is now coming back. I love when plants do that! (well, not the disappearing part so much!)

The Rocket - ligularia. This photo has kind of a busy background - sorry! I like these tall yellow blooms. The plant itself is extremely thirsty and kind of a pain, but I still like it.

I love the color of this daylily - the blooms are very small - maybe 2-2.5 inches across.

This is my only double daylily - so far! I like the yellow a lot.

This is one of my favorite daylilies. Beautiful color.