Garden's last hurrah

Hugo is under the weather. He went to bed feeling headachy last night, slept badly, woke with a fever, and finished the afternoon by heaving his chicken noodle soup just short of the toilet.

He's tried eating again and it seems to be staying down this time so hopefully the worst of it is over. Uno has been played, The Flintstones DVD's have been heavily used, and I've spent my day ferrying cold cloths, pillows, glasses of water, crackers, thermometers, and tylenol. It's not so bad when you're pretty sure it's not a 'serious' illness.

The weather is cooling. Last week I wore my winter coat on the morning dog walks. My tomatoes are turning black on the vines. We've had a cold summer and yet still, the garden put on a good show.

Hmmm. Not sure how I feel about this. I'm not a big fan of yellow, with only 2 notable exceptions, and this as you see, is definitely yellow. This baby's breath is hugely in need of dividing. Actually, everything is in need of dividing.
I've forgotten what this is called. Anyone? I used to have it in our garden plot, but that one was white.
Amelia's perennial sage and dahlia.
My beloved sweet peas. I adore sweet peas and they were the first thing I planted in this garden when we moved her last year. I had sweet peas in our garden plot also & each year I did the same thing: planted the seeds and then spent the rest of the growing season trying to keep up with staking & netting them. Next year I hope to finally have faith and put up the netting when I put in the seeds. It's just that there's something terribly forlorn about empty trellising and I always think I'll have the time to stay on top of it.
Oh the heavenly scent! The scrumptiously flirty petals.
One of the exceptions I make for yellow - cheery sunflowers!
Fuchsia in a pot by the front door.
Phlox nestled among the deodora in the front garden. There is a white phlox in the back garden which got powdery mildew and Roo chopped it off on the grounds that it was in the way of his mower & looked ugly anyway. It has been a mildewy summer; even our neighbour a couple houses down, named Guido & retired from working on the grounds in a local park, even he has powdery mildew on his maples - so we were doomed. I can't figure out how this one escaped, except maybe the morning glory that smothered it for a long part of the season provided some protection from the dread mildew. Whatever it was, once I started attacking the morning glory (a plant which has a lovely name & a vicious manner & which makes me quite mad) it appeared in its pink glory to shine on us.
A couple more weeks and we'll be cutting everything down for the winter. And so, another growing season comes to an end. Except for the grass and weeds - those seem to grow all year long here.