The Cosmos in the garden are a motley crew. Most of it is self-seeded from last years plants.
The bees have no care for floral coordination of the garden but I suppose we have them to thank for the multitude of seed heads around the garden.
So now in October we have the Cosmos plants attracting the birds.
Kourosh has noticed that they often arrive in pairs and you can see that there are two in this photograph if you look closely.
The Goldfinch (Carduelis carduelis) is one of the most colourful birds we see in the garden.
They give me a great reason for leaving the Cosmos free to seed and to delay any tidying of the garden.
I’d rather have the Goldfinch than a tidy garden.
a french garden 
Try this one on for “tangled garden”: https://www.google.ca/imgres?imgurl=https://www.gallery.ca/sites/default/files/styles/ngc_scale_1200/public/The%2520Tangled%2520Garden.jpg%3Fitok%3DOrvVfuc4%26timestamp%3D1501269260 &imgrefurl=https://www.gallery.ca/collection/artwork/the-tangled-garden&h=799&w=1000&tbnid=D_-mdMRHCuNmLM:&tbnh=160&tbnw=199&usg=__wgwoHIsL8IesLfyi9Ai85RPCnlY=&vet=10ahUKEwjY7rvI2oTXAhUW_WMKHTlhAn8Q_B0IlwEwDg..i&docid=TbU5i0EDSZB9rM&itg=1&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjY7rvI2oTXAhUW_WMKHTlhAn8Q_B0IlwEwDg by Canadian “Group of Seven” artist J.E.H. MacDonald.
Tom Atkinson
Cats: Hepatica (going concern), Barley (2007-2017): “the spirit of the dead will survive in the memory of the living”
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Beautiful painting! It would look very nice in my living room. Amelia
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Really charming photos and your last line sums up my gardening ethos too.
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We are looking for the same things. Amelia
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Me too !
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Here here to that!
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Three quarters of the flying insects in Europe are gone. Leaving a corner of our mercifully untidy Gardens to harbour the remaining quater is the least we can do !🐜🕷🐛🐞🐝
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Little islands of respite but not enough 😦 Amelia
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We have to hope and to keep passing on the message🐞🌞🐞🌞🐞🌞🐞🌞
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Fabulous Goldfinch photos Amelia. We’d love to be able to leave more vegetation to decay gracefully, but we find in our increasingly wet mild winters here, that it never gets frosted and then just slumps as decomposing sludge where all the early spring bulbs are emerging… Ah well…best wishes
Julian
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Confession time – they were Kourosh’s bird photographs. He is much better at birds than me. Amelia
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I’ve always loved cosmos. Just think of all the insects your colony of them must attract, along with the birds.
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Absolutely! Amelia
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Amelia, I think we would win the prize for “untidy garden” but we have a ton of cool wildlife living in it. Days this summer with the air full of huge dragon flies, and then very few mosquitoes. Thanks dragon flies. It’s spider season and the bushes are full of webs and tunnels. We also have an almost resident black bear—umm!, maybe not so good.
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Yup, that certainly trumps blackbirds stealing your cherries. Amelia
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Those close up pictures do not show the garden as untidy. The flowers are just finishing up. I leave sunflowers until the foliage is black and hanging because the finches like them so much! Well, I suppose that really is untidy. Oh well.
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I agree, it is important to leave flowers to finish up if they produce seed that is taken. They grow a lot of corn (maize) around us and we collect the leftover heads after the harvest and dry and keep them for the birds, otherwise they get ploughed in with the stalks by the farmers. Amelia
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I leave my cosmos for as long as possible, and I get little goldfinch visitors too. It’s so delightful, I wouldn’t tidy up my garden for anything.
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It’s nice to think of the same thing happening in your autumn on the opposite side of the world. I wonder if yours have been brought over by the settlers, like so much of your flora and fauna, or if they are your own. Amelia
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They would have been brought over by settlers, I would say. It was strange looking at your photos and thinking ‘that could be my garden’.
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Beautiful photos, as ever. I couldn’t agree more with you about the wild garden for wildlife…. I don’t “tidy” mine up nearly as much as most Egyptians do, and as a result it’s full of all sorts of interesting creatures. I had a friendly chat with a praying mantis on the rosemary bush just this morning….
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I’m sure you get many more interesting creatures than we get over here. Amelia
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Me too
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Every morning when I’m brushing my teeth I enjoy watching the goings-on from my bedroom window 😊. Enjoy your goldfinches, Amelia!
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That’s a garden – it’s not only the things that you plant that give you pleasure it’s what the plants attract 🙂 Amelia
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I think both the flowers and the Goldfinches are beautiful. Tidiness is a mater of opinion!
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We are also members of the untidy garden club. Good to see your bees so active, here all I have seen locally is a few Common Carder bees but then yestereday I came across a very active ivy bee nest site by a beach in Dorset, quite a surprise especially after all the storms.
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The Ivy bees around you seem to have a long season as you saw Ivy bees before I did. Amelia
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Aren’t goldfinches wonderful? I always think if one went somewhere distant – South Africa? Australia? – and saw one for the first time ever, it would be an unforgettable moment. Easy to take them for granted. And pink cosmos – definitely a top 5 bee attractor this year.
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We don’t get them in the garden all year round so we appreciate it when they come in. Lucky Cosmos are very sun and drought resistant so they do very well over here. They have planted them on a lot of the roundabouts around here. I hope the bees know the Highway Code. Amelia
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Oh so pretty. What a nice place
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Thank you, we like it! Amelia
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Every year we get plants where they were never planted, the untidy garden, love it! I never have the heart to pull anything besides weeds so we often have tomato plants growing with the other veggies or carrots and onions that pop up all over, I leave them where they sprout always. Don’t get me started on the flower garden, that’s the untidiest of them all lol
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It’s very hard to pull out tiny plants that you feel have struggled to put down roots. We often have plants in strange places. Amelia
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wow these flowers are soo adorable 😍😍😍nice👍
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