You Say Gaillardia...

... and I say Rudbeckia! A sharp-eyed reader has pointed out that a recent post (September 15) misidentified the blooms below as Gaillardia whereas in fact they are Rudbeckia. My apologies to followers of this blog.

Although they share the same splash of colour spreading out from the centre of the bloom, the flower shown below, with its cushion-like centre, is a true Gaillardia. A group of Rudbeckias (Coneflowers) have shared space in this garden with Gaillardias (Blanket flowers) over several years, and have migrated via seed dispersal so that the resulting volunteer plants have become indistinguishable to your blogger.  

  

As fall progresses, we tend to look for colour in fruits and vegetables rather than flowers. Identification is a little easier with most of these plants.

Clearly identifiable are the crabapples clustered on a branch in a different garden. They add cheerful colour to Sandy's fall garden. Until a dramatic drop in temperature yesterday, the early fall had seen warmer than usual temperatures and it has brought some surprises such as the Rhododendron ramapo below that had a second blooming in late September.

Sandy also sent in a shot of a cluster of sumac fruits, something she mentioned she'd rarely seen.

Luscious apples ready for picking grace the branches of an old tree on a former farm near Chester. The stands at our local farmers' markets are overflowing with apples, pumpkins and other harvest yields in preparation for the Thanksgiving weekend  ahead.

The next meeting of the Chester Garden Club will be held on October 17 and will take the form of a workshop on making decorative garden stones. Members are asked to bring along some necessary supplies, including rubber gloves, a ridged tin dish to be used as a mold, and assorted bits of broken crockery or other items that they want to insert as decorative pieces. For more details, please refer to a recent e-mail sent to all members.