While most of our days have been nice and warm and sunny, the night are downright frosty. I’m fighting the urge to turn the furnace on (I try to hold out to November each year). There’s even been the soft glisten of frost on the yard in the morning.

But it hasn’t been hard enough to knock the gardens down yet.

The Dahlias are just stunning. Which I love… but… I also need to get them dug up!!! That’s hard to do when they are still blooming.

I need to work on getting them to bloom a little earlier so I can enjoy them longer. The ones I bought from the garden centres did that just fine – but the ones I started myself didn’t start blooming until late September.

The Zinnias have been an absolute blessing for the pollinators that are still coming out when the sun is shining.

Same with the Cosmos

I absolutely adore these double bloom cosmos and so do the Honey Bees.

But we don’t discriminate and welcome all Cosmos to our gardens!

The marigolds are also doing their part in the late-season pollinator buffet

Most of the marigolds are in the vegs beds, but I also have clumps of the Strawberry Blonde Marigolds (right) throughout the beds in front. And they are officially my favourite marigolds! I started them from seed – and planned to save some seed from these to plant again. But I’ve since learned, they probably won’t come true from see if I do that… so I will have to buy new seed in the spring. But I think it’s worth it!

I’ve wrapped most of the roses in burlap (something new I’m trying this year) But Bolero (left and middle) and Good as Gold are still blooming, so I’ll wrap them in another week or two. It would be a shame to cover up all that beauty.

The Bicolour Monkshood is always one of the last flowers to bloom – but it’s well worth the weight. Juat look at those masses of flowers. This is the best year for it yet. I tried to start some solid purple Monkshood, but it didn’t make it. But seeing this makes me really want to try again.

And last, I leave you with a little spicy discovery I made while putting up the giant skelly. Tucked among the fading autumn foliage, I discovered a beautiful Saffron Crocus (Crocus sativus)… except I never planted any! My best guess? A sneaky little saffron bulb must have hitched a ride in a bag of giant crocus bulbs I planted last year.

Unlike giant crocuses, which bloom in spring, Saffron crocuses bloom in autumn and produce something rather extraordinary: the world’s most expensive spice! Those brilliant red threads you see extending from the centre of the flower are the stigmas, and they’re the part harvested to make saffron. Each flower produces just three, which must be carefully picked and dried by hand. It takes roughly 150–200 flowers to produce a single gram of dried saffron!

So.. I’m not sitting on a Saffron Fortune.. but it’s a wonderful little discovery none-the-less!