Fall Color Garden Favorites!

Hi there! I just thought I'd share some of my favorite, tried-and-true perennials that really shine in the garden in Fall. My yard has been really aglow with color lately! Sometimes we forget that many flowers keep on blooming waaay into Fall.

Here are my enormous Japanese anemone. They are NOISY with the buzzing of bees, and pretty much take over their patch of garden bed -- and a lot of my pathway. But they are FANTASTIC. I'll try to remember to post a photo of them once they go to seed and get their cloud-puff seed heads! A random pink gladiolus has snuck into the background of this photo (and the garden bed?!). Dried up bee balm is in the foreground -- I'm going to collect some seeds soon.

Oh, this is a new path (and beds) I made. I moved the stones (and will soon move the gravel) from my blueberry area, where the path was only serving to host crab grass. :( I'm waiting for the cardboard to break down, and then I'll move some other plants into the beds! I love my garden cardboard projects. ^_^

Asters! I didn't realize there were so many native asters. My house came with a bunch of different kinds! These bumble bees are ASLEEP in the morning, still too cold to move! C. told me that they sleep in flowers overnight! Aren't they the cutest insects you've ever seen? They look like little dogs, or teddy bears, or Pokemon, or something.

A gradient of cherry tomatoes! I think this was a volunteer plant from last year's scattered dropped tomatoes. I had too many of those this year (they don't come up true to type), so next year I'll be better at weeding them out.

Here's a view of some of those asters, plus zinnia, brown eyed Susan, old crocosmia in the background, mint everywhere, and strawberries in the raised bed. I need to move that raised bed . . .

More zinnias! I decided after their success last summer, that State Fair zinnias were the winner, and best type*! Last year I started them from seed, but this year I was too late so I got them as seedlings.

They are TALL and hardy/sturdy, and come up as all different colors! The pink in the last photo is this same type (as the red above).

Zinnia: State Fair! Orange this time

This is the same orange zinnia; I love the variety of shapes in the same plant

I took this pic right after a rain. Delicious thornless raspberries! They're easy to grow; do yourself a favor and plant some! Mine fruit in early summer and then again in Fall. I don't prune them properly (or at all), but what I get is good enough for me!

My new favorite, salvia uliginosa. I've put it in several spots in my yard. GORGEOUS!

Here's another new favorite: Gomphrena "Fireworks"! It's an annual, but look how pretty! And it really sprouted right up and bloomed a lot!

Closeup of gomphrena. I also got a red one, but it's mostly done blooming now.

Beautyberry bush. I didn't even realize it was a native plant! I fell in love with this plant back in WA, when we'd pass one off an alleyway during our long neighborhood walks. It keeps its purple berries all winter! Long after the leaves fall off, you have this lovely BRIGHT PURPLE "winter interest".

I'm really proud of this salvia "Black and Blue" that I OVERWINTERED!! That's right, I piled a ton of mulch on it last fall, and not only did it stay alive, LOOK AT IT! All of my salvias made it, and they are huge!!! (And that's more red zinnia next to it.)

I know it's just boring old sedum, but every fall I do enjoy seeing how nice it looks. Yep, it's "Autumn Joy", it's super simple to grow, my house came with a ton of it, and in my mind it's very "old lady", but guess what? . . . I'm basically an old lady myself, so maybe that's why it's growing on me! HA!!

Finally we have blue mistflower -- which looks exactly like ageratum (don't you think??!), BUT: 1) it's a perennial; 2) it's a native plant! 3) it grows into this REALLY NICE medium-sized shrub, and 4) the flowers have lasted ALL SUMMER and continue now! I got one early in summer, and recently got another, I liked it so much. Hooray!

That's all for now! Maybe I'll pop in again soon with later-fall plants or some winter interest. ;) Happy gardening!

*I've always loved the little, pompom type zinnias, too, like Lilliput. But State Fair is BIG, BRIGHT, BOLD!

2024 Garden 5: seedlings and growth!

The veggie garden just grew a lot -- because I put in all my seedlings/starts! It's finally consistently 50 and above at night, so I think they'll be okay. Last year I lost all my tomatoes to a late freeze, so this year I'm appropriately paranoid about paying attention to such things.

I rearranged the bricks of the overall garden to form some steps in the paths between beds. I still don't have enough bricks, but I don't care enough to go buy any. I'm sure I'll find some this summer. (I got all these bricks from a neighbor a few years ago when she redid her front walkway!)

On the far left outside the fence, I put in some perennials that I moved from elsewhere in the yard. The fall leaves had already blown over and piled up there over the winter (handily killing the grass in about a 1-foot-wide strip), and I thought it was a good way to encourage pollinators to the area! So I've got multiples of Shasta daisy, bee balm, rose campion, and okay okay I bought a nice native echinacea and native lobelia cardinal flower. OOH, it's going to look so GOOD and be HUMMING with activity!! I hope.

On the right near the fence, you can see my two Cavendish strawberry beds. I plan to move some of the new runners over to a different bed this summer (start a NEW strawberry bed with fresh plants), and take out these old plants (they do have a life span, after which they don't produce as much) -- making way to rotate other veggies into these two beds next summer.

(Can I just add, it makes me happy to think of Cavendish strawberries because the variety was developed in Nova Scotia and I've been to Cavendish, PEI! So they remind me of the Maritimes, hee hee! A bunch of strawberry varieties originated in Nova Scotia.)

The snap peas are coming along nicely. I don't have much to add other than this year I'm also trying to be better about weeding the weeds right away.

More homegrown goodness after the jump!

A puzzling week or so

We've been doing puzzles lately! Thanks to an informal puzzle exchange at yoga (gotta love yoga), I swapped out a couple puzzles. Everyone's been working on them on our big dining table. I love how it becomes this mini-obsession for all of us as we walk by. ^_^

This one was FANTASTIC because we could all claim a little box section to do, put it together, then slowly join them. For once, I didn't mandate that the edge had to be done first. ;)

More happenings after the jump!

Sewing is going to the Dorybird sewing blog

Hey everybody! Just a quick announcement: I'll be posting new SEWING PROJECTS back on my Dorybird sewing blog! Why? Because I want to! :D

I still have lots of sewing backlog from 2022-2023 to post over there, but I'll do it as I'm able, so it will be a fun occasional surprise of yesteryear for you. You can always click the year tag in the right sidebar to see everything I've made that year.

I just posted a shirt I finished today, and if you've been clever and awesome and wonderful enough to sign up for my newsletter (again, blue box in the sidebar on either blog, just do it!!), you should have gotten that post in your email along with the one from this blog.

This Creative Path Blog will continue to be the home for all the other creative things I'm up to! Yay!

2024 Garden 4: Peas, lettuce, fruits!

Well well well! We've had a lot of rain and both warm and freezing weather, and my little crops are coming along!

Look look! I think these are lettuce starts! (Or was that arugula? I forget what I put where, oops.) My carrot seeds don't seem to be doing anything (yet?).

I removed the (very low) netting from the snap peas, and put the cages back for them to grow up. It seems to me that critters and birds like to eat the pea seeds, but once they sprout, they leave them alone. Maybe? I'm still glad to grow everything in my (mostly) protected new garden area this year!

Pretty! My existing raspberries have leafed out (and some transplanted ones in the new garden) -- last year's canes -- and in the background is my lovely peach tree! We've gotten peaches in the past, but they don't ever get to the edible stage before something happens to them. Hopefully this year?!

I'm tending some Seascape strawberries that I successfully dug up (to make way for a new type, Mara de Bois!). Some are in a pot on the deck, some are in pots in the front yard, some are around the edge of the upcoming tomato bed, some are packed up to give away. Yeah, I don't have that much of a plan, but I'm keeping everything alive! :)