JENNY'S BACKYARD PLANTS IN THE FALL

Yesterday Tyler and I worked away on our laptops in the backyard. Jenny always wanted us to use this area as another "room" and she would have been delighted to see the two of us there.

Jenny was conscientious about flowers being in bloom year around in her backyard. And, even in the fall, Jenny managed to make her yard beautiful. With the exception of the aloe, Jenny was the last to take care of the plants seen in this post. She put the plants near existing drip systems that she programmed. When I see her flowers, I feel as though Jenny is speaking to me. The photos in this post were all taken yesterday in Jenny's backyard. Whenever a bee buzzed around us, Jenny would say, "Bees are our friends". She would have loved to see this little creature pollinating her rock purslane (photo above). Most fascinating to me, these flowers open and close with, respectively, each day and night.

The aloe in the foreground of this photo below actually stems from the pot in the background. It started at the edge of the pot and, in its hunger for sunlight, reached over the edge. Tyler takes care of the plants in this pot now and tells me the aloe is solidly anchored in. As with so many of her plants, Jenny got this aloe plant from a neighbor who posted it as a freebie on a neighborhood website.

Jenny would be ashamed of me, but I didn't notice her Jolly Jester marigolds (below) until yesterday. I do seem to recall, though, that she got these either from a seed or plant exchange or from a nursery. In any case, they spread through the flower bed like wildfire--Jenny started with one or two small plants at most.

Jenny's cherry tomatoes are still going strong! I blogged about these back in August. A couple of weeks ago, I grabbed some tomatoes in order to harvest their seeds. I'll plant them in the spring. If they do sprout into seedlings I'll write about how I got the seeds out of those tiny tomatoes.