Deep and cold: Seventh Day December

 The view out to the vegetable garden. Below: Homemade vegetable soup.

We're enveloped in winter. We have just under 3 feet of snow on the ground thanks to a three-day storm earlier this week. Bitter cold followed almost as soon as the snow stopped.

It's beautiful and brutal. Time to break out the snowshoes and stoke ourselves with hot food, hot tea and our favorite port.

With everything buried, it's even more comforting to have a simple Saturday supper of vegetable soup with carrots, onions, potatoes, green beans and tomatoes from the garden. The harvest lives on.

Make yourself a cup of tea or pour yourself a glass of port and take a look at Seventh Day December.

Finally ...

... Seventh Day November. See it here.

Bench strength

The garden is maturing so a stone bench with a little history is a perfect addition.

We bought it at a sale on Park Point last summer and Brian set it into place a couple of weeks ago. We were told that the feet were salvaged from the Superior High School and the seat was part of a retaining wall near Miller Dwan, circa 1885-1915.

Autumn crocus: What's not to love?

Color coordinated

Hey, look! -- my socks and shoes match the garden. (A dahlia and snapdragons supply the red.)

Spectacular September morning

Yesterday's rain has given way to a sunny Sunday at sillydoggarden.
 

Top to bottom: Front yard with colorful pear. Backyard with pink celosia. An unexpected, natural garden ornament. Back bed with dark burgandy-black ninebark. Steam rising from the deck.

Sun setting on summer: Seventh Day Project does September

What are those brilliant orange flowers in the back garden, you ask. Well, those are Tithonia rotundifolia, also called Mexican sunflower. One of the owners at Garden House in Solon Springs recommended them during a chat last spring about favorite annuals. They don't look like much now, she said, as she placed two plants with plain foliage and no blossoms or even buds in one of our boxes. But just wait -- you'll love them, she promised.

And we do.

See other fun things in the garden in Seventh Day September 2013.