Fall Is Coming!

Fall is in the air here on the Key Peninsula!
Under the telephone wire in front of our house the birds have planted (hee!) sunflowers and a grain of some sort. It's pretty and kind of unexpected so we left it there.

I maaaay have overplanted the spaghetti squash.

I love these bushes. They're actually kind of ugly and scraggly as a whole but the blooms smell EXACTLY like honey. Which is why you have to check for bees (see above) prior to taking a big sniff. It's also put me on a so far fruitless quest for honey-scented candles and/or lotions. You can find a lot of milk-and-honey or fruit-and-honey but nothing just honey-scented.

I found this "pumpkin-tree" at Trader Joe's. I should have gotten a better picture. It looks like wee pumpkins on a branch but it's actually an ornamental eggplant.

Andrew with some of the spaghetti squash. We've harvested 5 already with 17+ more on the vine. It's started to grow into the neighboring field and trying to get into the other raised bed. It's out of control.

Me and Arlie in front of our ornamental grass for scale. Each season brings so many new things!

This is a weird plant. In the winter it has large, glossy green leaves. In the spring it gets these pitcher-like flowers. And in the fall the leaves and flowers wither away leaving these bright red berrys on stalks.

This fall also brought a yard mystery. We had a madrona tree completely disappear. Like, without a trace. One day we had a 7-ft tree in our backyard, the next day nothing. There's a few dead leaves left on the ground so we know that we didn't imagine having a madrona for the year and half we've lived here. The ground hasn't been disturbed, there's no sawdust. Nothing.