The other day I headed outside to visit the garden for some end of the season vegetables, and as I entered our backyard I caught something out of the corner of my eye that stopped me in my tracks.   There were four large bunches of crocus blooming like mad behind our house… in October.  I am not much of an ornamental gardener, but I thought that I understood the basics of which flowers tend to bloom when.  After my years of living in snowy places, come March my color starved eyes are scouring snowy gardens looking for just these types of flowers.  Seeing the spring-time narcissus in our fall-time backyard stunned me for a moment and I stood there staring at the riot of lavender.

I would later learn that these flowers are in fact Autumn Crocus and they bloom in the fall.  Thank you Ruth and Corinne for helping me out with that.  Corinne’s mom had the same reaction that I did when she saw what she thought were spring flowers popping out of her fall garden.  I love being surprised by nature.  There will be many things that I forget about this first year in Canada, but I will never forget that feeling of wonder as I stared out these flowers that appeared out of synch with time.

Crocus blooming in early October.