Bloomin' Tueday

Time for one last Bloomin' Tuesday at Ms Green Thumb Jean's blog.  Not much is blooming anymore, so all I have to offer is dried blooms, favorite things, and visiting critters getting ready for Winter.

One of my favorite decorations for Fall is my pumpkin made from barbed wire ~

The bushes are ready to feed the birds for the Winter ~

And the Squirrels are burying acorns anywhere they can dig a hole.

Sometimes, I cut my Hydrangea when the flowers are white, sometimes when they are green, and sometimes not at all.  I hot glued green and brown blooms into a styrofoam wreath and wired it to my old screen window for the Winter.  It will be interesting how it holds up over the Winter.

I put my trusty old wheelbarrow in the front with pumpkins, a little hay bale, and a bushel basket with pots of Sedum Autumn Joy, Rudbeckia, yellow Mums, Kale, and Purple Fountain Grass in it.  A tip I read a couple of weeks ago was to spray your pumpkins with flat polyurethane to keep the squirrels from chewing them up. They haven't gone near it and the pumpkins at the neighbors across the street has been eaten down to the bottom.

I hope you are enjoying Fall where you are.  While it's a very pretty time of year, I don't look forward to Winter at all.

Changes, visitors, final bloomers and plans . . .

I wish I would have taken a picture of the Redbud tree when it was all in bloom, but now it is putting on it's Fall show.  From purple buds, to green leaves, to yellow leaves.

Our Red Jade Crabapple has gone from being covered with white flowers ~

To now offering berries to the birds ~

There has been such a change in my Japanese Blood Grass, Sand Love Grass, and Sedum Autumn Joy - these pictures were taken 2 weeks apart ~

We haven't seen the Hummingbirds since September 23, but they'll be back next year.  We did have a larger visitor over the weekend though.  This Cooper's Hawk has been hanging around the backyard hoping to catch something to eat.  To give you an idea how large it is - the rabbit beside it is 9 inches tall.

Our next visitor came Sunday.  This is a Red Tailed Hawk that had caught a squirrel and was eating it in the parkway in front of our house.  He is one B I G bird!!

I also went to a sale this weekend.  It's a great place to find old 'stuff' for the yard.  I picked up this old garden cart for half price ~

I have been looking for one for years!  I have admired one I see when I take my walks.  In this photo, they have cosmos and ground cover.  There have been years when they have it filled with Coral Bells, or Spring blooming bulbs.  I may plant some bulbs in mine in a week or so.

This is the last of the blooming flowers in our yard.  My Lancifolia Hosta is the first one to come up in the Spring, and the last one to bloom.  A lot of my other hostas have already turned yellow and shriveled to the ground.  When my other hostas come up and bloom, I can't wait to cut their flower stalks off - on the other hand, I leave these on.  I like that they are a light airy, arching bloom, as apposed to the others that stick straight up from the plant. 

Thank you to Jean for hosting Bloomin' Tuesday.  While our weather has been beautiful, I'm afraid there won't be too many more Tuesday's with new flowers blooming.  Check out Jean's blog for more beautiful gardens.