no pix.. then i dont believe you when you say you have roses in nov ... lol

We do too.

Roses are still blooming in my garden ( zone 7a, NC) after some hard freezes. Some look good enough to cut and bring inside. Here's a bouquet of Mrs. B.R. Cant which I picked about ten days ago.

I do think your evergreens are beautiful , Ingrid. There is a walk trail not far away that has many evergreens in their Japanese garden. It is certainly possible to make a beautiful landscape without any roses. A nearby rose friend has a wonderful selection of evergreens that compliment his large rose garden beautifully. He has some kind of bluish grey pine tree in a large pot set on a stump that looks dazzling. To me a rose garden can be boring without some punctuation by other plants.

Here's some of the walk trail I was talking about:

This is Broyhill park, donated by the furniture company.

There are some big fish in that pond, probably catfish. There are turtles of all sizes in another part of this park. They did put some modern shrub roses in but to me they don't add much of anything.

Such tranquil views. and rhe last picture looks very similar to one in our local botanical garden. maybe all the japanese gardens look similar.

Here are my November blooms.

Maybe the last sunshine of the autumn

Julia child has a pink lace

A couple mums. this might be ”feeling green”

They call it “purple wave” but i doubt this is the true name

Happy fall gardening!

Gosh Forever, I love Julia with the pink edge. Very pretty. I did not know that was a possibility and I like it better than the solid yellow. Good Job!

I don't usually care for mums but that green colored one is so different! Do the blooms stay green like that?

Austin, I don’t think pink edge is a norm for Julia Child. It might be caused by the stress from cold temperature. But I too like this form even better.

Meg: I am pretty sure the color stays that way. Its name is ”feeling green”, and if you search you might be able to find some online nursery carrying them. Mine are from a friend.

The photos of Broyhill Park show a masterful hand at work. No roses needed in a design such as that. However, it would never be mine as I need color and change and movement, as I suspect many of us do. I agree, though, a garden with only roses would be one-note, even if one added rose that climb and ramble, with flowers of different sizes and habits. I find the Austin rose garden in England almost indigestible, with hundreds of roses that seem rather uniform except for color. Of course it's meant to showcase their roses and in that respect is not a botanical garden or a personal one. For myself I would always choose a cottage garden, with a rather wild profusion of different plants, where there would always be lots to look at, even in my fairly short winter season. That's why evergreens will always have a place, although the squirrels have attacked even my bushes of boxwood and other evergreen shrubs. I wish I had some answers for the future.

Julia Child didn't get the memo that winter is here

My Mrs. B.R.Cant hasn't been the same since the turkeys visited. We are both blessed and cursed with a couple of flocks of wild turkeys and one spring, they decided that the grubs in my tea bed would be delicious. So they climbed on the rose canes because they could. Heavy birds= damaged canes.

And, Erasmus, Tess is usually at its most glorious in the fall. My three Tesses (I checked this afternoon) are all leafless. You and I are really close to the same latitude, but the Canadian polar fronts seem to be targeting us worse this year.

please keep the pictures comin. "Tomorrow is another day, and new canes eventually on roses."

I like to see wild turkeys. My son and his family lived in a spot that backed up to a lot of woods and wild turkeys and coyotes were plentiful. My grandsons were pretty young and I remember the youngest one stretching out his arms and proclaiming, " I am the king of the dragonflies!" Now he is a bird watcher.

I think , ann, that you get colder weather than we do. Aren't you at a higher elevation? I'm not sure of our elevation...probably about 1,000 ft but 30 min. from the eastern Continental Divide.

To me the leaves falling have always had a bit of a sad note. They speak of things passing. But no...you are right to hope for the new tomorrow....this is just a cycle, not an ending. Renewal will come again!

The Broyhill park is well kept but sometimes it has been stupidly managed. There used to be a great many ducks on the larger pond but too much duck do on the walk trail. So they stretched wires across the pond to keep the ducks from landing . the whole place seemed sterile and somewhat hostile after that. Silent, and still. Dead. But they learned and took down the wires and now there are little colonies of ducks. So much nicer.

I like a wilder look as well, Ingrid. I guess a cottage garden means you find a spot for things you want to grow....you just want to see them, and you make room where you can.

I like Austins and big sumptuous blooms but think it's monotonous without some smaller flowered ones and singles. I like the variety.

Your story about the ducks illustrates how beauty without signs of active living can become sterile and cold. What would a cottage garden be without bees and other insects visiting the flowers and the sound of birdsong? A garden is in its way a profound illustration of the interconnectedness of life that we can lose sight of in our often rather mundane lives, and perhaps it is one of the reasons we're drawn to visiting our gardens over and over again. Watching a favorite rose unfurl over a period of days until it becomes a fully realized and glorious open flower that we long to photograph and show others is just another example of constant change and growth that epitomizes life in one of its most beautiful forms.