Stroll Around the Yard

 This shade bed is on the west wide of the house. The elephant ears have become quite monstrous!

 Adam wants to dig them up and divide them so we'll have them elsewhere in the yard too.
Below are three hostas in their third year, plus a lantana bush that is just loving its location! It's quite large, and I only put it in a little over a year ago.

 It attracts many butterflies like this one below. They flutter and fight all over our back deck.

 The herb garden, on the east side of the house, looks like a wreck, but actually it's doing quite well. I'm a firm believer in letting things go to seed so they come back again of their own volition.

 I broke off the spent dill stalks (on the left, above) and laid them down on the thyme. And that empty corner in the upper right? I pulled all the old cilantro stalks out there. I had repeatedly stripped the cilantro seeds (i.e. coriander) off the dry stalks and scattered them in the bed.

 And there are all the little new cilantro plants, coming up! Aren't they darling? I adore cilantro, and now we'll have a whole new crop of it this fall.

Here are the dry cilantro stalks from early summer. I sat on the back porch and rubbed the coriander seeds from them, and put them in a jar. Now they're in the freezer for next year's planting.

 We had a dreadful dry spell about a month ago and my oldest rosemary plant died!! So sad. I do struggle with rosemary here. It does have two green stalks still on the right side, see?

 Of all our trees, the fig shows autumn first. Its leaves brown and curl and drop, and its bare bones show. This I see from my craft room window.

 I'm enjoying my new creative space. I finished a chapter in my book today. I made bee balm lotion yesterday and made lip balm today. I warped up a new houndstooth pattern scarf on my loom yesterday too.
If we stroll to the garden (which is a little walk), you can see my luffah vines draping along the garden fence.

 In addition to the six large luffahs, I have two new babies growing. I'm quite pleased. The vines are so pretty atop the fence. That's only three plants!

baby luffah

sweet potato bloom

 A fence within a fence -- this will (hopefully) protect our Blue Lake bush beans from those pesky rabbits. We will see! They utterly destroyed my last bush beans -- beans, leaves, and stems. Inside this fence, do you see the new beans coming up on the left? The big bushy plants are basil. Horseradish is on the far right.

 My next difficulty is now to preserve green beans. I know I cannot can them in a hot water bath. I need a pressure canner, and I don't have one. I could freeze them, but honestly, I dislike frozen beans unless they're going into soup. I want yummy canned green beans like my sister-in-law Anne makes.

So sometime soon I must find me a pressure canner. If you have any ideas, please advise! I hate to pay the price of a new one, but I may have to. They don't show up in thrift stores often.
Well, there's our yard! How's yours? Are you doing any autumn gardening, or are you putting your yard to bed for the winter?