Oh LL, that is just beautiful.

Connie, Queen of Compost in her (very) short video "Connie Loves Okra".

Actually - she loves all of the garden clean up. :)

Lynda

Here is a link that might be useful: Connie loves okra

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Miscanthus sinensis 'Purpurascens'

No pets. Frost has left most of the garden looking shabby but the grasses still look good.

Here's a picture of a Dahlia started from seed. One of the few things still flowering here.

Love those Miscanthus seedheads. They are so light and fluffy.

Great pic of your horses, LL. They look so wild and free!

I love ornamental grasses & winter sowed dwarf fountain grass seeds last year. They sprouted & grew but are still small. I also love the things that keep blooming in the autumn garden:

Tricyrtis hirta/toad lily

Angel roses in fall color:
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I am still enjoying the bloom on the Knockout roses. We have had only light frosts so far but we are expecting a freezing temperatures tonight.

Sue {{gwi:759430}}2010-10-23

The picture of the horses is lovely, the cow "poaching" okra is adorable. I love the dahlia, you raised it from seed? how proud you must be of it.

The miscanthus just reminds us that the season is almost over. I love the toad lily...hmmm. I used to have some of those growing where the stupid ivy is now.

Tha angel roses and berries just look like fall, don't they. And I love roses. My neighbor gave me a new yellow knock out, and it is doing well so far.

But my roses have decided to give a "last hurrah before winter, and New Dawn is always lovely qhen it blooms:

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kay

Wow!! Looks almost like cotton candy! I love pink. Love roses too but my black thumb and roses don't play well together. The toad lily is growing beside black snakeroot which is also blooming now (photo still on camera).

I have a few Chrysanthemums blooming that are pretty cheerful. They are so easy to root from cuttings too. I have a few that I started from cuttings this year that are blooming too. I will be interested to see how they all look next year....

Great pics everyone. I especially like that Toad Lily, gardenweed, very unique. And your rose, Kay, is just gorgeous.

Probably most people have seen my garden pics so I'll post pics of my 'garden helper'. LOL Really she would be no help at all in the garden so is either in her large dog run near the garden or tied on a long leash near me if I'm working further away. Always keep her nearby as regard her as 'bear-bait'. She loves being outdoors.

Here she is on one of our camping trips, she loves to dig and luckily doesn't mind baths! We had to fill numerous holes before we left that campsite but it kept her amused!

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This is my angel Frisco. :) He will be SEVENTEEN years old in February, but he still prances along, and takes his job very seriously. And his job is to always be nearby, in case I need him for anything. He even helps me with the dandelions by eating the flowers!

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And this is same spot, photo taken last week. Best fall color I've ever seen on that tree.

WHAT GREAT PICTURES and HOW SWEET IS THAT COW????
Well I still have lots of gardens and am just putting in my veggie patch since I live in sunny Florida. Here are my ducks with my shih tzu Mickey. He swims with them,maybe he thinks he is a duck. I don't know but I did NOT get a Lab because I did not want a wet dog in the house and so I got my supposed lap dog HA!
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This is Mr T .
He eats with the ducks and truly enjoys duck food and veggies. He brings some back to the pond for the other turtles and fish (via his messy lips!)
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tanya

Tanya - great pictures!

what awesome pics!
The cow video is so cute! When i was little girl, my grandpa told us the brown and white cows like yours made chocolate milk. I thought that was the best thing since glitter crayons! lol

I love all the photos on this thread.
Woody, are those hips on the rose?

Lots of fall color still hanging around here.

thyme - yes, those are hips on the roses. It produces abundant hips after blooming all summer long (you can see there are still some flowers too - it will bloom until a really hard freeze). It never gets any diseases - a great little rose you grow from seed.

My Queen Elizabeth rose has set hips this year. They are just starting to turn red now, so it'll be interesting to see how they do. The hips are quite large and round. I didn't realize the roses like that would produce a display of hips. I noticed the hips starting to form as the roses faded in summer. I deadheaded most so it would continue to rebloom, but let some of the hips to develop just to see what happened. In spring this year we only pruned it back to 2' or so, so it's really tall out there now - well over 6' and still blooming. I suspect it may not produce buds down low next spring so we may end up with a leggy, tall rose that we'll want to remove, but we'll see... I like to experiment :-)

Nice fall color, thyme. What does the bank in from of your house look like at this time of year? Lots of good color there I assume - or is this a picture of the bank viewed from the side...?

Here's an interloper (via the compost) that started to grow.... and grow.... amid the fairy roses. I kind of like the orange with the pink. Happy (late) halloween!
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This is Lizzie, and the last of the Morning Glories taken the other day.

Woodyoak, thanks for the rose info. I will have to find that one. The hips are so red and look more like berries from a winterberry to me. I really love the look of it.

The picture is of the side garden by the driveway where we park our cars. There's actually a set of steps behind the grass that you can't see in the picture. Those meet up with the other path that goes up to the arbor to the cottage garden.

The front slope is also a pretty good show this time of year. I've been perplexed by what to do about the area where the peonies are. I love them to death but the foliage is crap late in the year. THey get mildew and don't get the nice bronze foliage of my others. But they are a single, vibrant bloom so perfectly easy and showy for the slope. Was thinking about planting some mums in that general area to fill in that part of the slope in the fall. Here's a pic from last week.

Almost all the leaves have fallen now. It really happens so fast once we get those cold nights.

Nice fall color there, thyme!

I'm not sure if they ship to the US or not, but the link below is to where I got my original Angel rose seeds. The picture there is misleading because doubles are uncommon - most of the flowers are single. Once you have a few growing, they will self-seed from the hips and you soon end up with a thicket! You also will find occasional roses popping up in odd places - the birds love the hips in winter so they spread the seed around a bit. The hips are a fabulous feature because they extend the show from the roses well into winter.

The seeds are fun to grow - the seedlings start to bloom when they're about 3" tall! So, if you want to, you can edit to only plant the colors (vary from white through various shades of pink, solid colors and bi-colors) and types (single, semi-double or double; scented or unscented) that you want. I was too lazy to do that, so I've got a mix of everything :-) They are best planted somewhere where they can form a small hedge or thicket, rather than trying to keep them to an individual rose.

Here is a link that might be useful: Angel rose seeds

Wow. Those pictures are all so gorgeous it almost makes me like fall. (I like the season itself, but not the foreboding, looming winter. I think fall should go right into spring. :-)

The animals are all SO adorable! :-)

Thanks for sharing such great photos, everyone.
As I come from a different region, here's my photo to share with you; a Mokara orchid.

Xuan

I must be blind because I can't see anything in that picture except pink roses. What do rose hips look like; am I missing something? I thought rose hips are the petals from the rose..am I wrong?

pippi21 - Rose hips are the seedpods that form after the flowers are finished. They're at the base of the flower where it's attached to the stem/vine. They're filled with seeds plus they're high in vitamin C. The pretty petals fall and the rose hip is what's left behind to ripen. They will turn red like an apple & they're edible. If you Google rose hip images there are photos.

For everyone who is interested in angel rose seeds. They're available from Park Seeds. I'm going to try some next year. Roses from seeds? Who knew??
lucia

I notice that Park's catalogue also features doubles in the picture they show of the angel roses... I wonder if their seeds produce any more doubles than Vessey's does? Doubles are definitely the exception in my experience. Which is fine, because I really prefer the singles anyway...

This isn't a great picture but you can see that one of these seedlings has a flower bud when the seedlings are barely as tall as the label stakes:

Pippi - can you see thee red hips in this picture? They are a very striking color feature in the fall.

Here are two pictures I took in recent weeks.

This arch was just added this year, but the grapevine went crazy growing over it. Unfortunately, the thousands of grapes all got some sort of disease. Still, it was beautiful!

This is Oliver (darker) and Hedwig (white). Hedwig is from a shelter and my mom found Oliver in a tree when he was just a kitten. SOMEHOW he ended up living with me. {{gwi:637607}}

Xuan, that photo should be framed. It's absolutely beautiful.

Woody, I tend to prefer singles too. How big has your gotten? Does it really stay to about 24"? That is what I have been finding for size online. You still have lots of flowers in that picture mixed with the hips. Do you deadhead at all or just let it do its thing? I'm definitely going to order seeds. I may come back to you for seed-starting info if it's not on the package! Thanks so much!

Thyme - if you deadhead, you don't get the hips! That's one of the reasons the singles are best - the faded petals drop off cleanly, whereas the doubles are messy mush for awhile :-)

The really important thing to know about these is that they are best to plan to grow as a clump/thicket/hedge. All those hips drop off during winter - which means there are lots and lots of seeds on the ground. They germinate easily so you end up with a dense little forest of roses. I orginally planted about 8-10 fairly tiny seedlings on the steep bank on the south side of the driveway (in heavy unamended clay...) That is now a patch of roses about 4-5' long and 30" or so wide! The roses average about 2' tall or so, with the tallest being about 30". It takes them about 3 years to start producing true canes, so prior to that they are a bit shorter. They get some tip die-back at the end of winter. I just wait until mid-May when the leaf buds start showing/expanding and then clip off any brown tips.

They do a big bloom in June and then continue blooming to a lesser extent until the snow flies!

If you look at the botanical name, it means miniature China roses. The China roses introduced the reblooming gene into the European roses - modern reblooming/continuous blooming roses have China roses somewhere in their ancestry. So, from the botanical name, I assume the angel roses are 'species' (wild) roses with 'dwarfing' genes.

The scent varies from none at all to quite a strong, sweet 'rose' scent. The dominant color seems to be a pale pink but they range from white to quite a deep pink. Bi-colors are common too.

Seed starting is simple - plant them, keep them watered, and wait... :-)

This picture is from June 16 2008 which shows what they look like in peak bloom:
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This is the same area from the other side, June 4, 2010. Keep in mind that this started out as just a few seedlings.... The companion plants mixed in there are lavender, a variety of other herbs that seeded in, a small blue butterfly bush and miscellaneous other things :-)

In this one from 2006, you can see more clearly some of the range of pink tones in the flowers:
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In this picture from 2009 you can see that they make a nice filler/skirt for under a tall rose. The Blanc Double de Coubert got too big though, so we removed both it and the angel roses there this summer and replaced them with a 'The Swan' hydrangea and clematis.
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The angel roses are very useful and attractive but you need to think of them growing en masse, not as individual roses.

Hi Woody, Yes I saw in the earlier post of yours that they form a thicket and I can think of a perfect place for them! I should have qualified my question about deadheading. Do you deadhead until a certain time in the season to keep them blooming as late as possible and then let the last flush of flowers go to hips? It sounds like you don't deadhead at all which means they must just continuously bloom on their own w/no help from humans! I find my 'Fairy Rose' blooms much later in the season if I "help" it a little. Thanks for all this great information. I'm really looking forward to trying this rose. Any pests or diseases to speak of?

LL, sorry I highjacked this thread to get more info about the rose. Back on track with some new pictures!

I like the trees that turn late in the fall. This one was from today of a beech we planted last year. Its leaves won't fall off until well into spring.

The big japanese maple is done now.

I guess the turkeys haven't realized Thanksgiving is right around the corner and they should be hiding now!

Thyme - I never deadhead at all. They bloom from late May until late November all on their own... I've never seen blackspot or any other disease on them. When the Japanese Beetles struck the Blanc Double de Coubert rose, they didn't seem to be interested in the angel roses - perhaps the flowers and leaves are too small to interest them :-)

I love the turkey picture! I've never seen wild turkeys here - too suburban for them I guess :-)

What a marvelous collection of photos!

Woody, I do so wish that someone would be able to come up with a rose like that angel which only needs about four/five hours of sun! All the roses are so pretty, but those fit the feel of my garden best.

Cheating a bit - more than one picture. A little sequence showing the brave hangers on from the summer, the fruit of autumn and the plans for a mid winter cheer up. All taken in my miniature garden today.

Here is a link that might be useful: Passing seasons

Flora, seeing the picture of your medlar tree brought a smile to my face. A few years back I judged a small parlour show in a neighbouring town. There sitting in front of me was a plate of medlars, I had only heard about this fruit but never I'd never laid eyes on them before that night. The samples on the plate were unblemished and uniform in size so after mulling this over in my mind (staring into space) for a minute or two I gave it a first. Still don't know much about this fruit other then they are ready to pick when they start falling off the tree.

Annette

The backyard.

Thanks for sharing such wonderful pictures everyone!!! They are all so great.

So after a few days worth of preparation; pies, homemade dinner rolls, turkey and all the fixings, I sat my family down to (Canadian)Thanksgiving supper. In the middle of our meal my husband looked up from his plate with a horrified look on his face said "babe what is that!?!" pointing at our dinning room window. Since I am blind as a bat I had to get up to see and this is what I found.

To be honest I didn't realize there was anything this size north of the Amazon. It was at least 4" long and almost rodent like. I run for my camera. While my husband tried to hold on to his composer. He hates creepy crawlies with a capital "H". I am the bug killer in our house. Our nephew took care of this guy thou. I could have manage to capture and releasing it but not killing it, it looked me in the eye. So we all had Thanksgiving to remember. And my husband is still sleeping with one eye open.

November from my garden,

These were cut and arrange on November 14 from my Nova Scotia garden. They are a little wind and rain torn. I was very surprised that the 'Spanish eye lavender' was still in bloom. I start it from seed this year so it was late getting start, around the end of July.

Carrie

Here is a link that might be useful: Cottage garden album

Well... shouldn't have looked at that before bed! 8-O