Some days it looks like November around the farm. The wood pile, for one, is growing steadily. Since the ice storm of January brought down around 20 small to medium trees on our three acres, plus countless branches out of even larger trees, there’s been plenty of material to create an enormous wood pile that Mendy is steadily splitting and stacking for this winter. So that feels like November. But the balmy weather, t-shirt weather, doesn’t feel like November. We have yet to have a frost though the usual frost date is typically about October 20th.
Without a frost, there are some summer flowers still blooming away, like these Blue Sky morning glories planted to cover the corner of a chain link fence for the summer. They did a great job of doing that! While the cool wet Spring had them off to a very, very slow start…by late summer they were thick and bright.
True to their name, they open in the morning at sunrise and curl up closed in the evening. I loved this color. Next year I’d like to try the deep purple ones…
The yellow buddleia “Honeycomb” is still blooming beautifully. (The pink ones gave up the ghost weeks ago.) There are bees all over it all the time. In the mornings I find them curled up on the blooms, sleeping in them! Sleeping inside flowers, now that’s a good life.
Meanwhile, there are dahlias still covered with blooms though they are fairly raggedy by now. The bees are crazy for these dahlias too. I can’t think of the variety right now, but they are the kind you can grow from seed — Unwin’s mix I think? The other day I snapped this pic of a bumblebee enjoying a bloom.
And as I moved around to get the right angle on the picture, I noticed there was a different bumblee bee on every bloom on the plant—nearly a dozen! That’s larrapin!
