Lots of Lovely Magenta Pinks

and: <<Shock! Horror!>> A NO DOG painting!!!

Flowers are putting on a brave show in the face of imminent winter, and the near-constant rain is making them all look clean and fresh.

The above dark pinks are Busy Lizzie, nerine lilies and Japanese anemones with fab mounds of varied greenery in between to nicely set them off.

The last dahlias are putting on a spectacular exhibition — like they do. The middle pic is the Evening Primrose (of oil of Evening Primrose fame), and on the right is a late-flowering honeysuckle with a particularly appealing, architecturally shaped petal.

The underside of these fern fronds makes a brilliant picture. They’re so perfect. This fern grows, with no input from me, in a pot outside the front of my house.

Another pot outside the front of my house contains these Michaelmas daisies — they are the most amazing colour. Most of the ones around the neighbourhood are positively wishy-washy in comparison.

While I was admiring my Michaelmas daisies, even though I’ve done nothing to deserve them, PupperJack whined that he could hear some cat hurling insults at him.

These are the sort of insults cats hurl at him that no human can hear. PupperJack could hear them but couldn’t see the cat on next door’s front lawn, the plant pot being up on a wall, and Doggo being down behind it.

I raced us inside before he decided he wanted to hunt down the source of the insults.

There are some handsome buildings in this neighbourhood. I rather like this one — above — it’s a pub called The Sportsman on the next road over from us. All the buildings around it are residential and it fits right in.

I looked it up to see what it had been and found it was once a hotel with a stables block called County Ground Hotel, which hosted many of Bristol’s Edwardian elite who wished to stay next to the cricket ground — which is just down the road from it.

For about five minutes at this time of year, Virginia Creeper puts on a marvellous show with its rich colours. The rest of the year, it’s a right pain in the garden, smothering everything, shoving out more delicate plants and generally choking off diversity.

PupperJack thinks so, too. He’s thinking disapproving thoughts about Virginia Creeper. He is.

Ooh, look (below) — a painting of mine with NO dog in it!

In a Northern Wood by Katharine Lee Bates

Fragrant are the cedar-boughs stretching green and level, Feasting-halls where waxwings flit at their spicy revel, But O the pine, the questing pine, that flings its arms on high To search the secret of the sun and escalade the sky! Rueful hemlocks, gaunt and old, with boughs a-droop, despairing, Clutch for touch of mother-earth; the while the pine is daring To rock the stars amid its cones and lull them with its croon, And snare the silver eagle that is nested in the moon.

Dennett started the Photo-a-Day Challenge to help combat the pandemic blues. Since then many others kindly share their week with us:

Erika Burkhalter, Anne Bonfert, Tracy Aston, Lisa Bolin, Juan O. Aguilera, David Wade Chambers, June Nguyen, Mia Verita, LensAfield, Barbara Radisavljevic, Diana Lotti, Barb Dalton, Kim Zuch, K. Barrett, Penny Grubb, Ellie Jacobson, Shruthi Sundaram, Jillian Amatt — Artistic Voyages, Vidya Sury, Collecting Smiles, Ann James, Louise Peacock, Jane Frost (Jane Grows Garden Rooms)

(If your name should, or should not, be on this list, please let me know.)

Susan’s Amazon Page / Susan’s Etsy Store/ newsletter sign-up

Read more from me: © Susan Alison 2023