September in the garden

 

Pat found he could get a table that moved out of the path to the back from the front seats of the LTV motor home.  He contacted the factory and they sent him the mostly assembled table.  He installed it and it works very well.  We tried it out recently.  We should not have to pack it away under the bed, any more.  It can stay where it is and move around easily for when we are travelling and when we are eating.

I was able to get photos of the fish.  The is a sarasa and the only big shubunkin that I seem to have now.

This is a very unusual tiny fish.  It is older than 2 years as it has gone  to its gold colors.  It seems to be a miniature.  Especially when you see it next to the bigger gold fish..

Here are a number of the ones that are still black with the little shubunkin that has already changed colors.

Here is the bigger shubunkin with the smaller one and some of the smaller black ones.  

The bigger sarasa with the small shubunkin and the small black one.

Now this is another unusual size of a fish.  The big black one is bigger than the older light gold fish.  The black one is not yet 2 years old and I bought the light gold one a couple of years ago,  The big black is beginning to turn gold.  

                                        
 The big black one compared to the size of the smaller black ones.  Apparently the fish do not turn colors until they are at least 2 years old.

The two sarasas that I have left from the original purchase of two or three years ago.

This is a Kaffir lily or Schizostylis.  It is a good plant for some color in Autumn.  I am going to try to spread it around the garden a bit more.  It is in the iris family of plants and grows from rhizomes.

The Autumn crocuses are another good plant for Autumn color.  I am slowly getting quite a number of them around the garden.  The leaves show up in Spring and die down, and then the flowers come up and open.

Verbena bonariensis is a tall and slender-stemmed perennial. It can grow to 6 ft (180 cm) tall and can spread to 3 ft (90 cm) wide. At maturity, it will develop a woody base. Fragrant lavender to rose-purple flowers are in tight clusters located on terminal and axillary stems, blooming from mid-summer until fall frost.   It is self seeding around my garden.  The bees and butterflies love it.  This one arrived in one of the pots on the deck.  

July was very dry and I was watering quite a lot.  We were away for about 3 weeks in August and the garden did not get any rain.  It was very dry and most of the plants dried up.  We had some rain a couple of weeks ago and I did manage to get some time to water a bit.  I see that one of the gentians I thought was dead seems to be getting new little leaves.  It was a transplant from the back little rockery to the little rockery at the front.  The established rock/alpine garden plants all seem to be doing ok.  I won't be doing any more transplants to the little rockery at the front until after the leaves fall.  And then they can have the winter to put down some roots, and not be raked up when I collect the leaves.  The trees are just now starting to turn colors.    The garden needs weeding, as it got away on me in August and has not had any attention since then.  The apples are not quite ready, yet.  We did get a few grapes earlier.  There were only a couple of plums and no figs.  Hopefully, next year will be a better year.