Canadian Cottage Garden, in the earlier evening

 Photographs taken on 05 September 2025, around 6:30 p.m., as the days are getting shorter.

Canadian Cottage Garden on 3 September 2025

Fall is not far away, the days are shorter, the sunshine is not as hot, the nights are cooler, there is the smell of fall in the air, birds are flying south, bears prepare to hibernate, and the garden is closing down. While flowers are dying back we know that they will return in eight months, that’s eight long cold months. Cruel months. Monochromatic months of sense deprivation. No wonder we celebrate summer, tolerate winter, see winter as something to survive and put behind us, and in November we already count the months to spring.

The garden on 3 September 2025

A herb garden, 31 August 2025

Yesterday—it was the last day of August—I visited the city/farm garden behind the Hingston Hall residence at Concordia University (Loyola Campus). I’ve visited this garden for many year; it is thriving and the herb garden is growing better than ever. This was a good summer for gardening!

Elf dock 

Common primrose 

Milkweed 

Worm wood 

Mullein

Bee balm

Horse raddish

White sagebrush 

Chives

Leaving the herb garden 

31 August 2025

Canadian Cottage Garden on 11 August 2025

 It’s 33 C. What’s good for the garden may not be good for the gardener.

    

Vincelli's Garden Centre on 13 April 2025

We used to have fun—buying annuals, choosing perennials, preparing the garden for another year of gardening—at Vincelli's Garden Centre. A few years ago someone wanted to build condos on this property but it seems the City of Cote Saint Luc wisely decided against it. This past winter the main building, visible in these photographs, was renovated and something must be happening, new tenants moving in, but no condos. These photographs were taken on 13 April 2025.