...with the faint sound of phantom footsteps playing in the garden.

Virginia Creeper Vine autumn color

October 21 ~

With frost in the air for three nights, the warming days since have been welcomed, even though their heat pales to the summer past.  The last three butterfly weed plants were put into the prairie garden just before the frost; then yesterday the remaining three heartleaf ginger plants were added to the others in the front shade garden, as the oak leaves have begun to fall.

Sometimes when I sit outside, as I do today, the sky seems so beautiful with playful wisps of clouds floating past high overhead on currents of air.  What seems so boring in photographs that cannot imagine what the soul feels… well, as I gaze up into that eternity above me, it closes my thoughts, and leaves me in quiet peace.

The front porch glider bench was added to the potted patio area as a place to rest while working around the potted plants and new raised bed area that is quite small… just enough room for lettuce to grow next spring.  Mostly a sunny area, short breaks work well; as during the sweltering months of July and August, shade suits me better.

The worst apprehensions experienced in my life are occurring as I hand over the control of my gardens to my husband, the Great Destroyer, so he declares.  It’s disheartening, entrusting thirty years of one’s hard work to a person who has never cared about gardening in all of those thirty past years.  

Perhaps he’s changed 😎, perhaps I’m too much of a dreamer😒; either way, It's best for me to let go of it all.

Amsonia (Amsonia hubrichtii)

One week later at sunset, after rain storm

Brown-eyed Susans, a biennial.

The first year.

They will be dug up next spring, and placed where needed in the gardens.

Tulip Poplar Leaf - Liriodendron tulipifera

Just as leaves are beginning to fall

One week later after high winds and rain storm

October 30 ~

It’s so difficult making decisions out of suppositions.  My chiropractor thinks the forever pain with neck adjustments is caused when the adjustment aggravates my peripheral neuropathy.  My orthopedic doctor has implied the same.  Physical therapy is fizzling out lately due to so many cancelled appointments from headaches and neck problems.  I feel like my life is spinning out of my control, and it’s a feeling that drops me into depression.  

Instead... with my early morning walk, chills race up my spine as the cold breezes brush past my face like love fleeing the scene.  Two hours later the sunlight warms the degrees to early spring, and love returns.           

Crocus 'Goulimyi'

The fall crocus endemic to Greece.

Named in honour of Greek amateur botanist 

Constanytine Goulimis (1886-1963)

This is growing in morning dappled shade, 

and afternoon partial sun.

I decided not to remove these non-native bulbs, 

as I love them and the hover flies 

and some small bees visit them regularly.

American Hover Fly eating pollen from Crocus 'Goulimyi'.

Their larvae feed mainly on aphids by sucking the juice out of their body.

They may also eat thrips and other small insects.

Swamp Sunflower, Helianthus angustifolius

with Winterberry 'Sparkleberry'

Coralberry, Symphoricarpos orbiculatus

leaning on dried leaves of a lily plant.

While sitting on the glider swing, I lean back and look up at the old white ash tree looming high overhead.  She has only a few yellow leaves left after the winds and breezes have relentlessly coaxed the others to let go and lightly land on the earth below with the faint sound of phantom footsteps playing in the garden. The panicles of seeds are plenteous on her branch tips, as she will rest this winter while her children feed the birds and perhaps grow a new seedling early next spring.

I have no elegant prose or even a poem I could relate to, to end this meandering trail of thoughts and photographs.  This is just The End.  I’m hoping to be back by Thanksgiving, but only time will tell.  After the leaves of many colors have fallen and browned on the landscape, embrace the season and ask yourself what you still like about it.  There’s always something to like.  See if you can find it.

Toothed Spurge, Poinsettia dentata

with autumn color and 3-lobed nodding fruit.

Summer annual with 3 seeds in each fruit that mourning doves love to eat.

Grows in the dry garden.

Dry Garden with Aromatic Aster 'October Skies', and a weedy white aster

I think this is a Fiery Skipper Butterfly.

It's caterpillars feed on grasses;

so if you mow your lawn short or too often,

you probably destroy them before they are able to turn into butterflies. 

Common Checkered-Skipper Butterfly, Burnsius communis.

Its caterpillars feed on mallow plants.

Cloudless Sulphur Butterfly, Phoebis sennae

Northern Red Oak Tree

Rusty Viburnum (Front)

'Appalachian Spring' Dogwood Tree (Middle)

American Hornbeam Tree (Back)

Sweet Dustin

This post is linked to:

My Corner of the World

Saturday's Critters

Ebb and Flow

Austin trying to fit on my lap.

There’s a sadness that overwhelms me at times.  I feel invisible with no value…empty.  My dreams are plagued with these feelings, on and on and on, until mercifully I wake up.  It’s so tiring pulling myself up out of melancholy, only to trip and fall back into it.

Sitting outside, I thought I would feel better, but sixty-degree weather is a bit more chilling out than I really want.  I cool enough refilling the bird baths.  How can it be that every time I check out the living room and bedroom windows, the baths are always bone dry with winterberry seeds left in the bowls and deposited around the edges?

I’ve been applying tape across the sliding glass doors and the front storm door to stop the juvenile Cardinals from colliding with the glass.  Robins seem to be the bird of choice in the back yard feasting on the winterberries and taking baths, so problem solved with the disappearing water and orange seed mess left as a thank you.

I’m writing this in Charlotte’s Room.  I tried calling it the studio, but no art or crafts; always the name reverts to my workroom which sounds like a drudge; and now that I think of it, Charlotte’s Room just reminds me of Lacey in a negative way.  It was Charlotte’s refuge when Lacey went after her.  I’m over thinking all of this.  It’s simply – My Quiet Place, where all pets have free reign, but husband only by invitation.

I’ve been reading about mindfulness, and it’s a concept I find difficult to embrace.  I seem to be constantly reminding myself that I am not practicing it and having to reboot.  One of the quotes I picked up on today is - “Just as a snake sheds its skin, we must shed our past over and over again.”  That’s a task I seldom excel at; hence, all those melancholy dreams.

There’s a strange feeling to this garden today.  Pale signs of autumn are in the air, but look around a corner and you will think it’s still a month ago.  The difference is the temperatures plunging from 99 degrees F. to 72 degrees high in one day, and never rising above low 80’s ever again.

While I walk along the pathways, the ebb and flow of the cool breeze is subtly different.  It is as if winter is lightly breathing in and out, blowing a coolness across the garden that sharpens the mornings and leaves the afternoons almost, but not quite, warm.  It will creep in on cat paws and dance across the grass, then without warning change the morning dew to frost, and the frost eventually to a deep freeze.

The anticipation of winter chills me to the bone.

Honeybee visiting Asters

Skipper Butterfly

The room I disappear into ~

also known as Charlotte's Room

I'm not a pink lover, and this room was a neon fushia when we moved in, 

so... for some reason,

I repainted it a pale ash pink, and added stenciled edging.

The closet door opened out onto the window,

therefore, it has resided in the attic for thirty odd years.

The first piece of artwork I ever bought.

I was sixteen, and accompanied mom to a tiny store of mostly used junk.

It's a pastel from one of the town's budding artist at that time.  

Something was very hungry.

 

Euonymus americanus

I have a fondness for Italian pottery

and

of course...

CATS

From an artist in Ukraine

Dry brush oil painting

MIlkweed Vine

Winterberry Berries

Heuchera americana

Birdbath

'Minnaloushe'

Purchased while in my early twenties 

visiting an artist coop in Reno, Nevada with my mom

 while dad, not an art lover, waited in the car.

I still love it.

Just a fun print, greeting me as I walk into my room.

Maybe a Small Carpenter Bee on Blue Stemed Goldenrod

Swamp Sunflower

The little antique brass duck lamp finial,

bought at a Virginia City, Nevada antique store

when I was in high school.

The rest is new... vase and rabbit from Japan,

and hand painted plate from Sweden.

The ancient coral piece I found in a river bed fifteen years ago in Tennessee.  

From an artist in Ukraine

Spittlebug's Bubble Home

Bumblebee on Aster 'Paten'

A fancy table with no purpose.

The cat bowls are underneath, so we shall say it provides the place

where X marks the eating spot.

Sand from my parents yard where I walked barefoot as a child.

It was crazy scooping up sand as a momento,

but I still have it these many years.

Aster going to seed.

Honeybee on Swamp Sunflower

Skipper Butterfly

French Limoges handpainted plate

signed by Pierre Lenoir, an architect who lived

between end of 19th century and first half of 20th century.

Rudbeckia maxima

veinwork of leaf

Joe Pye Weed Seed

Great Spangled Fritillary (Speyeria cybele)

on aromatic aster

Mommy says it's almost impossible to photograph me. 

The moment she enters the room, I'm up and on my way over to greet her.

I don't know why she thinks I'm Charlotte.

She calls me "That Darn Cat" much more often.

Lifeless, waiting for the sun to warm them.

Hand-painted plate from Canada

I'm disappearing for a while.  

This Post is Linked To:

My Corner of the World

Saturday's Critter

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day