You know Autumn is closing in when you see lovely flower seed heads like this.

I came across this lovely seedhead when I was out walking my dog with my husband almost two weeks ago on our Canadian Thanksgiving weekend here in Toronto.

We were at a local park that we often go to for long hikes with our Labrador Retriever. It was late in the afternoon and the sun was bright and low in the sky. I saw the seed head with the sun shining behind it and knew I had to take a photo. I hope that you appreciate it’s simple beauty as much as I do.

This is my Black Labrador Retriever, Midnight .. having fun at the beach.

She just loves to play and swim in the water, even if it’s freezing cold! She also loves it when we throw balls or sticks for her to fetch … loves it so much that she’ll stand in the water and literally whine as she waits for us to find something to throw to her. Uhm … even if she’s got a darn stick right at her feet! LOL

I took this photo in March (the 7th to be exact). We always seem to go to the beach more often in the winter than the summer. If we lived in a warm climate that wouldn’t be so weird, but we live in Toronto which is normally fairly cold in the winter. However, every one in a while there’s a nice semi warm day .. often in February and sometimes in March and that’s when the bug to go to the beach gets us.

The day we went happened to be very warm for March. It was 19 Celsius (66 F) … more like April or May temperatures, so of course we had to get outside and enjoy the day. After spending some time at the beach we went and ate a late lunch at an outdoor patio … but in between we found a really strangely decorated house. If you’re curious take a look at the post on Odd Planet to see this very funny and odd house.

Enjoy!

I think this red tulip is a bit of an exhibitionist. There’s a clump of red tulips in the oval flower bed in the center of my garden and each year when they come up they look like nice normal tulips … for about a day … then they open their petals wide wide wide – just like the one above.

Why? I’m not sure … It doesn’t seem normal to me. These red tulips are certainly different in that manner than all the rest of my tulips. LOL

Oh and they don’t stand up straight either … their stems flop over and bend in odd directions – as if someone sat or fell on them. Very strange.

Do you have any flowers or plants in your garden that just never seem to grow or act quite right?

It seems to me that Helebores love their shade so much that even their flowers try to shy away from the light. I only have one Helebore plant left (I did have three once but two seem to have died out) and it’s flowers, when they bloom in late March or April, always hang their lovely faces downward.

It’s a shame because the flowers are so lovely. Delicate, pink, sweet.

To take a good picture of a Helebore bloom I often have to use one of my hands to push the flower stem backwards in order to get the flower to face upward or at least horizontal while I maneuver the camera with my other hand. It’s not easy! LOL

Do you ever have to do some strange moves to get the picture that you’re going for?

My back yard garden is divided into two distinct areas – one small patio just large enough to fit a nice patio table that seats four comfortably, and the back garden area lined with 3 to 4 foot deep garden beds along the edges, with grass in the center of the back garden area.

Between the patio and the back garden area is a an oval garden bed that attaches to the garden beds on the right side of the yard … it’s in this garden bed that you’ll find these lovely white tulips blooming away in April.

Have you landscaped your backyard? If so, do you have just one big backyard with plants (and maybe rocks) strategically placed in certain areas) or did you divide your yard as we did so you have a more functional relaxed area ie the patio for eating and entertaining, and a garden area?

These beautiful blue Glories of the snow are pretty much done blooming now. They came up so early this year … like near the beginning of April instead of mid to late April like they usually do!

I have several clumps of these flowers in white, pink and this lovely blue. Each year the clumps seem to get bigger and bigger. I guess I’ll have to try to separate the clumps some time in the near future. I have a few bare areas of my garden (it’s pretty full but there’s a few empty spaces) and I could put some of the divided clumps in these areas. At least in Spring they’d be full and lush!

How is your garden doing this spring? Any flowers blooming yet?

Yep, my dog is a Ham! She rolls over onto her back at least twice a day and lets out a few high pitched barks and wookie growls hoping that we’ll come over and rub her chest, thighs and bum. LOL

This is a photo of her on her back enjoying a rub … just look at that face … she’s one happy girl!

BTW if you’re wondering what the white thing is in her mouth, it’s a toy bone (power chewer) that she’d chewed down to a nub … it was replaced with a new one shortly after the photo was taken.

I took this photo of some of my Pink Hyacinth when it was just getting ready to bloom. This was mid-April … of course it’s been blooming it’s pretty little head off and smelling up my yard with it’s heady perfume for about two weeks now.

I have several clusters of Hyacinth growing in my back and front garden beds. Most of them are pink or purple, but I have a few that are a soft peach in color.

It’s been warm here in Toronto the last few days so we’ve had the windows and doors open and every once in a while (especially early morning and late at night) the smell of the hyacinths will come indoors. It’s lovely.

Do you grow Hyacinths too?

All of the spring flowers in my garden are coming up earlier than they usually do!

My crocuses came up on March 15th and bloomed until about the middle of April. They usually come up toward the end of March, but we had a beautiful winter this year with much warmer than average temperatures (above freezing most of the time) and absolutely NO snow in March at all! We set records!

So no wonder all my plants are ahead of themselves, eh?

Right now my garden has Tulips, Daffodils, Muscarii, Hyacinth and more in bloom and my roses are and many other perennial plants are all leafed out. All of these plants have been active and showing signs of life since mid to late March and the flowers that I just said were blooming started blooming in early April! Way earlier than normal.

How’s your garden this year? I know that a lot of my readers in the US had a terrible winter with lots of snow … but most of us here in The Great White North (Canada) had a fantastic winter with very little snow (uh remember the Olympics?).

I know, I’m gloating .. but we usually have worse winters than most, so give me this one, would ya?

This is the time of year when I begin to long for summer. I guess I have the winter blahs (having a cold to go with it doesn’t help!).

I can’t complain too much about this winter. It’s been rather spring like for the most part with only a few extremely cold days so far this year. For the most part we’ve had above average temperatures here in Toronto with rain rather than snow.

With some luck this weather will keep up and we’ll ease into spring and it won’t be all that long before I start seeing beautiful flowers like this Climbing Westerland rose growing in my garden again.

Do you have the winter blahs too?