Little Splashes of Colour....

Maple leaves in my garden

Yesterday was a glorious day, with blue skies overhead but a definite nip in the air.  As I mowed the soggy grass one last time, cleaned the mower and the rest of the garden tools before putting them away,  and laid newspaper and mulch over an area where I plan to plant more shrubs come spring, I found myself thinking I had to finally accept that winter is on its way.  Slowly the plants were dying back, the ground beneath my feet mucky from rain, the leaves on my shrubs and trees becoming sparse. The predominant palette, with the exception of the little dogwood and maples I'd planted this year,  was grey and brown and mottled green.

Dogwood adds a splash of fall colour

I fetched the camera to capture the beauty of the sun, low in the afternoon sky, illuminating the maple leaves, and then looked around to see what else I might photograph.

And what I found astounded me.  Though lacking their earlier profusion,  there were still many flowers in bloom this mid-November afternoon, many little splashes of colour. .  Fifteen, by my camera's count, though I may have missed a few.

Some were in pots, some in raised beds, some in borders, and some climbing fences.  But they were there, in my dying November garden - and suddenly my dying garden was very much alive.

A saying of Dr. Wayne Dyer's came to mind:

"If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change." 

How true of so much more than just gardens!