The telltale signs are there. Swaths of ladybugs are congregating around windows and doors looking for somewhere warm to hibernate, the sun is setting at a sensible time, the watering ban is lifted for all of North Battleford. It's a truth just as hard to accept no matter how many times you've experienced it: summer is all but over.
For most folks this means the garden to-do list can be thrown away for another year, but for Brenda Korchinski and Michel Piche, the changing leaves is just the beginning of the next phase of their garden.
"In a couple of weeks the fall colours will really come out," says Korchinski, "in the sedums, and some of the perennials will go to a pale colour, all of the hostas have a nice fall colour if you don't have a hard frost. It's all planted for seasons. Like right now you'll see we have lots of sedum autumn joy and hydrangea that have fall colours.
"Then we have things like solomon seal, which is one of the perennials, and it will go to white in the fall, so you'll get different colours at different seasons."
After a few questions, it's obvious Korchinski knows her plants. Piche is quick to praise his wife's plant smarts and also notes how it has informed their collaborative roles.
"I think we divide the job between all the flowers and the hardscape. What I mean by hardscape," Piche explains, "is the pond, the pergola, the burblers.
"Brenda is very knowledgeable about (gardening), so she's responsible for all the beautiful plants."
With their house built on a corner lot, most of Korchinski and Piche's yard is visible to sidewalk passersby. The compact side yard forgoes a fence with a more aesthetically pleasing row of spruce trees with their lower branches trimmed to the trunk.
Behind the spruce is a deck built along the side of the house, which offers a bit of hard-to-come-by privacy, and a koi pond you'd hardly be able to tell has any fish dwellers for the covering of abundant lily pads. Piche takes responsibility for the pond's maintenance, but says it was initially a group effort.
"When we first moved here in 1999, we started digging (with) the kids, we dug it by hand."
Along with the pond, the other big feature is a substantial pergola. The structure, which takes up a corner of the yard, is surrounded by three walls of lush grape vines, and can comfortably seat 10, was a solo project.
"(I built it) over three years. Last year I was done in October, building it.
"There's 40,000 pounds of sand under here," Piche says, motioning to the cobble stones surrounding the structure. "I'm quite proud of it," he says, smiling.
If Korchinski seems less enthused it's because the sizeable pergola was formally her vegetable garden, although she says she's happy with the result.
While her vegetable garden is now home to 40,000 pounds of sand, Korchinski doesn't miss it too much. Instead, she's come up with creative ways to hide vegetable plants around the garden.
"I snuck in some beets. If you look at the grapes (around the pergola) you'll see some beans in there."
"Around some of the trees are beans too. There are vegetables stuck in there in among the day lilies," Korchinski explains as she walks over to the city-owned boulevard, where she was granted permission to take out the standard grass and fill it with over-flowing plants, including one rogue zucchini that had grown out of its designated area and crept onto the road.
Korchinski and Piche use every inch of land, including the ones not in their yard. For people on the outside looking in, the yard is an inviting change to the ordinary, and Korchinski is quick to note that they've never experienced any damage.
Perhaps the public reception to Korchinski and Piche's garden is most symbolized by a man out for a nightly jog who paused momentarily and removed his earbuds to call out to Korchinski "every year your garden is beautiful. I love your place, just love your place."
