It is October, but the dahlias just keep on blooming. Some flowers are a little windblown and tatty, and the big blooms of dahlia ‘Crazy Love’ have been nibbled by earwigs, but they are still worth cutting and bringing indoors to cheer up a gloomy week.
This is the second week of October and that’s three small fresh flower arrangements with no heated greenhouse or air miles involved. Flowers grown with the addition of homemade garden compost and watered with recycled bath water. I am rather pleased about that although it has been a battle with the slugs this year.
And, as I cleared away last week’s dying flowers I thought they still had a charm and grace in their faded condition worth photographing and perhaps using as the starting point for a scarf or two.
Finally, even the zingy lemony yellow dahlia (a potluck purchase as an unidentified tuber) has earned its keep as I have realised it’s acceptable in a blue and white vase on the kitchen window sill.
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Agnes Ashe 
Don’t tell ANYONE summer’s over. Then it just might last a little longer. Your flowers believe it.
Yes, yes, yes . . . I know . . I think I only whispered it really.
Summer is over, but the dahlias are still blooming, and I find
they are more beautiful still …
Very beautiful pictures.
I wish you a good day
Thanks – I think that we appreciate them more as fewer and fewer plants are flowering. Sadly I seem to have lost my Michaelmas daisies this year 😟 which would have provided flowers into November.
I think I like the faded flowers better than the fresh looking ones, this time of year – it seems to fit with the way things are. Your garden is really the gift that keeps on giving – I love the photos.
Yes, I like the flowers even as they decline in the vase. I’m not a very tidy person so often have VERY faded arrangements on the mantlepiece until suddenly I notice they’ve started to rot and then it’s straight to the compost bin! My garden does take up too much time these days probably either a Saturday or Sunday each week depending on the weather during the growing seasons. Thanks for the compliment re photos.
I had some roses someone gave me, In a vase, so long that they dried because I liked the way they looked and each day, I thought I should toss them, and then I said– not today, they are still beautiful. This post reminded me of this feeling.
Oh yes, I think roses fade and dry in a very satisfactory way and come to think of it so do hydrangeas. I have a shallow, copper pan with blue hydrangea heads that last from October through to the spring slowly drying and gently fading to a bluey grey.
Yes, our hydrangeas are pinkish and the turn a maroon grey beige that I look for and enjoy for weeks.
Dahlia is my favourite flower! Personally, I love them more than roses. I wish I had a garden like you. Sometimes, I just like to smell flowers and grasses…
Ah there are so many lovely flowers – I don’t think I can choose a favourite, it’s usually whatever is currently doing its thing in the garden. I do enjoy gardening, but sometimes there is too much to do and not enough time when the weather is okay. Gardens – swings and roundabouts, as they say!
Beautiful images Agnes. My paternal grandmother had a front garden full of Dahlias and was a renowned expert. I struggle to grow them in our sandy soil.
Yes I know all about sandy soil 😡 My best dahlias are grown in pots with very controlled conditions and the rest take their chances in my vicious, free-draining soil. They are fed with garden compost, watered and mulched – a lot!!!!