Looking out my kitchen window, my eyes seem to be searching for orange

Looking out my kitchen window, my eyes seem to travel to plants and blooms in the tones of orange, rust and burgundy. It's October and I just can't get enough of the warm colors of fall.

Even the kitten that plays in the flower garden has orange in its calico-colored fur.

We know the weather is going to get cooler, but somehow we are never ready for the chill and then the freeze that ends our growing season.

I'm not sure just why the flower colors are so much brighter preceding a frost, but they are. Perhaps it's because the green-colored items in the landscape are changing also. The first freeze always seems to come too soon, but we won't miss the bugs that pester us as we sit outside.

It's time to harvest seeds from our favorite flowers. I have to vote for the Dreamland zinnia as the best performer for a second year in a row. Their happy large blooms are fantastic in the landscape and perfect for cut flowers. They hold up well in a vase lasting several days longer than other zinnias.

The colors are bright and cheery for summer and even better with their blooms of orange, gold and even a medium/dark pink. Add in some red rooster grass to a vase and they form a perfect fall bouquet.

We need to remember when harvesting seeds and laying them out to dry to mark their varieties and color. As they dry we wont be able to see what color they were.

Fall is all about harvesting. If you feed squirrels, its a good time to visit a farmer's cornfield following combining. If you're lucky and the farmer isn't you can harvest a lot of ears of corn for squirrel feeders. We are not so lucky as we haven't harvested any corn from the ground yet.

It's also time to harvest pine cones for winter decor. We need to get them picked up before any fluffy white stuff decides to cover them.

Looking out any window of my home I know its fall and harvest season. Soybean fields are looking bare and deer can be seen grazing on open cornfields. Enjoy the weather, the harvest and the colors of orange Mother Nature gives us in the season. Before long it will change again and I won't be as anxious to walk outside into the landscape outside my kitchen window.