While our brief Indian Summer continues (it was 72F today) I thought I'd reprise some of the fall flowers that have enjoyed the extended growing season this year. Yesterday I tramped out in the sunshine to take more photos of The Maple (coming soon in a post this weekend) and I found a couple of buds on the yellow rose. This bush doesn't know when to quit.
Very little is left of our mums after the last two weeks of October offered rain almost non-stop. But on a sunny day in mid-October I took several pictures of them. These red ones were overwintered from last year and when the wall was finished, we planted them there. They spread out as though they liked the spot!
Orange seemed to be missing from our mum collection so one day Norm surprised me with two pots ot them. These flourished along the south end of the wall, and we hope they will come back up next year.
Of course, I forgot that some kind of peach-colored mums had volunteered near the front steps. They set buds kind of late, but then bloomed for a couple of weeks, before the rains beat them down.
Meanwhile, in the back garden, as I wrote a few weeks ago, the tomato plants are also still producing. This clump of 5 green tomatoes were photographed just yesterday. There are 4 plants, and each has a couple of clutches like this. The Fried Green Tomato suggestions from Carol, Maxine and Janice will come in handy. Some of them are still turning so we are ripening them on the windowsills. The larger ones will get wrapped in newspaper in the basement and as they ripen, we will enjoy them. They aren't as firm or tasty as summer tomatoes, but they still beat the offerings in our supermarkets. And the smaller ones, well, we will try frying them.
About the time the zinnias succumbed to mildew, around a month ago, we purchased some pansies at the Farmers' Market and then planted them along the wall. These blooms were from a couple of weeks ago. Yesterday I see the pansies are starting to wind down for winter; they have set a lot of seed pods and look like they would like to crawl under the mulch and sleep a while. We hope, of course, to see them early in the spring. I knew Pansies were hardy in Tulsa, and was surprised to find they are usually hardy here as well. Many businesses plant beds of them in the fall and I've even seen them blooming in the snow.
As long as the sun shines, the geraniums are happy I took this photo yesterday, too. Still on the porch. Soon I'll have to make decisions on which plants to try to slip and root, and which ones will come inside whole, and which ones I don't really have room for. Today I washed window sills and started rounding up trays and pots. We still don't have a freeze in the forecast through another 7 days. That is unusual, since the "average" date of the first freeze in Central Missouri was two weeks ago. But we will enjoy it while it lasts.
A year or so ago, when we were combing through photo albums for anniversary album photos, we realized that we tend to take the same pictures every year: first crocus, daffodils, roses, house plants in bloom, trees in bloom, flowers and fruits of summer, MO botanical garden, forays to the rivers to watch birds, and holiday decorations. And dogs, of course. Perhaps we are in kind of a rut, but I also think that putting them in albums, even in an online journal like this one, helps us remember our stories for this year. I hope you aren't bored.
Today we enjoyed the sunshine and took a 30-mile drive to visit a church member who is in a rehab center, recovering from an amputation. We went to cheer him up but found him upbeat and determined, doing his therapy exercises on his own, and curious about how WE were. We left glad we had seen him and in a good mood, which sustained us despite the humongous traffic jam we encountered on I-270 going home!
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