Vancouver Garden in the Fall

The color scheme in the Vancouver garden is now soft shades of pink and lavender. It's always a surprise to see the delicate Colchicum (sometimes called fall crocus) emerge, leafless, out of the soil. Four days later, its flowers are wide open. The small size of the plant can be imagined by comparing it to the greenery of the creeping thyme groundcover.


It's Michaelmas daisy time! These particular plants are 5 feet tall, but I have shorter ones too.
Blowing in the breezes in the back yard are the Japanese anemones, with a Rose of Sharon to the left of the photo. After I saw a blooming Rose of Sharon in front of Mark and Amy's Brooklyn home one summer many years ago, I had to buy one. This led to buying two more.

Now to the edibles...the raccoons are usually the lucky ones to eat the grapes though. The vine looks lush because the vine trimmer (JEK) is ignoring the branches crawling in the eaves, getting entangled in the camellia bush, and invading the neighbor's property. An advantage of not trimming is that it keeps the deck and SW corner of the house cool.
You're lucky that I'm including only one zucchini blossom.

This year for the first time, I have several delicata squash plants. I even got a non-squash eater to eat this.

The tomato patch is limited to 6 cherry tomato plants, growing right up against the south side of the house under the over-hang to try to avoid the blight which arrives with the damper weather. This plot is no rival for Mark and Amy's, and the irrigation system is a far cry from theirs.

And now for a true-life photo, the kind you wouldn't see in a gardening magazine. Pots of basil, a geranium that doesn't want to flower, two pots of Swiss chard that I plan to nestle up to the house when the tomatoes are finished to see if it will winter over, shallots in a pot, parsley and marjoram going to seed, sorrel that planted itself, a squash plant with a total of one fruit, and a few other miscellaneous plants.

Closing with the tallest hollyhock ever!