And A Time For Transition

 The Dahlias shut down last week. They've been slowing down production for the last month, easing into closing time. When the time came, they shut down completely, all at once. It's like being in a mall at closing time when all the lights go out in the shops. I almost expect to see a little sign that says back in six months. 

I think of them as resting and also rehearsing their act for the next year. They always present something new, like the yellow dahlia on the left sporting a touch of rose color on the petals.

Like every other farmer I'm looking over which plants performed best this year and making a decision about where to plant them next year. Since this garden is about edible landscaping the decisions are about which flowers look best with onions, garlic or lettuce. I once saw a very large planting of roses with red cabbage. They looked great together.

Here are some of this year's highlights. 

This dahlia starts out a darker color and fades to yellow. The two colors together are very eye-catching.

This planting includes calla lilies, dahlias and lathyrus

 

I kept the seeds from this collarette dahlia. Dahlias hybridize on their own so I'm very interested to see what the result will be with the seeds of this dahlia

 



The twin dahlias at the left facing each other isn't an every day event because flowers usually face the sun instead of each other.



Throwing sprays of lavender  against the Autumn Sky the tree dahlias are the last to bloom.

                                                                                                                         

 

  One day, when I was very young, my mother announced we were going to see a passion flower her friend Sybil had blooming in her greenhouse.

Passion Flower?                                   

 The very idea of a passion flower sent my imagination full speed ahead.

Sybil Showed us the flower.

p. caerulea

It looked just like the one in the picture to the right. She told us the purple crown represented the crown of thorns that Jesus wore. The five stamens are are the wounds Jesus suffered. The three stigmas are the three nails used in the crucifixion. And the ten petals represent the ten faithful apostles. 

You can just imagine how I felt, as  my conjured image of a big lurid   flower, on a long fat stem, bobbing back and forth over  a swamp of  desire, was dissolved by...........
    the Sunday School Lesson.                 

 It's been said that gardeners are the most positive people on earth      because they are always planting for the future. I am looking            forward to what volunteers will appear in the year  coming up.          Volunteers are plants that grow on their own without being planted   by the gardener. Every year this garden has volunteers that appear in complementary colors to the plants they are near. It appears that       there is an intelligence making the choices. For example a poppy     grew close to the peony in the picture.                                              











This is the peony.

This is the poppy.

If the poppy and the peony were human, people would probably    say, there's definitely a family                       resemblance.                                     

The intelligence also planted the pink      lineria and darker pink foxgloves in the  background, thus rounding out the          picture.           

 I once told a visitor that  the elegant, beautiful and artistic spirit that lives in this garden and plants with me, planted the Japanese anemones next to the brugmansia creating an effect I wouldn't have thought of on my own. He said, "You have a very vivid imagination." So I said,"We live in a very imaginative time. Not so long ago Ben Bernake had   over a trillion dollars printed up on the Fed's magic money printing  machine that creates money out of thin air." 

group planting by the spirit

"To me over a trillion dollars is a lot of money. The money allows a certain group to play monoply using genuine paper money.  So I ask you. Could a genie do any better?"

the spirit makes a fanciful arrangement using  anemone seed pods

So as we move along trading with our faith based economy I have just one thing to say.

         MAY THE FARCE BE WITH YOU