Ginkgo biloba, Maiden Hair tree, leaf

Emerging "Yellow Patches" mushroom

Amanita flavoconia.

Best color year for Serviceberries

I read an article touting the virtues of Service berries (these are probably Amelanchier canadensis, Shadblow) as a small tree that had 3 season interest - flowers in spring, red fruit turning to black in early summer and bright fall colors. Our trees had the first two traits but the last was fugitive until this year. The colors have been a dark orange brown for the past 5 years but for some reason this year the colors are quite fabulous. I wonder if it had anything to do with the trees not producing any fruit whatsoever this year?

Faded Beauties

These valiant flowers are actually only faded (old) in a time sense not color. The frost damaged Camellia sasanqua and rose actually retain their color, the Camellia acquiring a bluish tinge along the outer edges of the petals and the rose deepening in color though damaged.

Wild Honeysuckle, Lonicera japonica

The few remaining fall flowers of the wild Japanese honeysuckle, Lonicera japonica . Here's a good site which gives more information about this beautiful and highly scented but very invasive alien.

I was wondering why there were white and yellow flowers. I thought maybe one was fragrant and not the other but both seem to have an equally sweet smell. Then I read the info on the website above and found that the white flowers turn to yellow as they age.

Jade plant flower

Flower of the jade plant Crassula ovata. This is the first time this plant is blooming. I rescued two dessicated leaves that were sprouting tiny plants on a shelf in a basement window when we first moved into the house. The leaves apparently had dropped off the plant and were on the bare wood shelf. Those first two plants were given away as gifts but this is another plant from the leaves of the first ones.



I love the pink pistils.

Old and New

I liked the look of this photo, a memento mori kind of picture but also beautiful so I'm including it to the blog.

This is almost the last of the anemones to bloom. It is one of the oldest in our garden which we bought from an now defunct nursery as a tiny $1.49 plant. It looks and is tall like A. Japonica 'Victor Jones' but I can't be sure.

Climbing Hybrid Musk rose 'Sally Holmes'

We bought a couple of these climbing Hybrid Musk roses last week, to replace the Clematis paniculata which I dug up because it was getting to be a bit unruly and had the fault of only a short bloom time.

Though the rose appears to be a soft peach in bud and early bloom stage the mature flower becomes almost pure white with no hint of peach. One of the plants had a mature white flower on it when I bought the roses but the other had a peach bud so I thought they mislabeled the pot but soon realized it was the same flower when it opened fully. They are still blooming at this late date but then, we still haven't had a killing frost and the all the roses seem to like the cool weather.