Bloom Day - October

They say that the real gardening season in San Antonio is the fall. My bloom day flowers are proof of that.


In honor of the cooler weather, here's Autumn Joy sedum. This is the first bloom cycle since I bought this plant.  I was expecting pale pink flowers, but I'm excited to see the red. I wonder if the flowers will turn pink when they open fully. Either way, I'm looking forward to running my hands across their fuzzy broccoli-looking tops.

 
In the same bed as the sedum, the asters are going strong while the moonbeam coreopsis are waning.


This coneflower is a late bloomer. I have three of these plants. Two bloomed on schedule in the summer, but this one is on its own schedule. It has two bright blooms while the other plants have brown, crispy stalks.


The last blooming plant in my new bed is black and blue salvia. Since it started blooming in June, it hasn't stopped. Sometimes it takes a short rest only to come back a week or so later.


Two of my edibles are in bloom. These peas already have full sized pods as well as little flowers that remind me of bonnets.


The blooms on the garlic chives have gotten so heavy, they've flopped to the ground.


In the front yard, the pigeon berry flowers have turned to fruit. If you're familiar with how nandina goes from flowers to berries, this plant does something similar.


Before the pigeon berries make their fruit, the flowers look like white cousins of the liripoe flowers - tiny blooms held close on thin stalks.


On my computer, the yellow centers of these purple shamrock flowers stand out. I hope that comes across on your screen too.


We do have fall leaf color in San Antonio, but don't look up; look at the groundcover. By the way, I saw at least 50 of these dwarf plumbagos in one-gallon pots at Wal-mart for $3 (half off). I resisted buying any, but maybe I'll go back for just three.


This prostrate rosemary makes me think of Christmas wreaths. I like the gray-blue-purple color of the flower. I need to paint a room. Maybe I'll match the paint to this flower.


Speaking of Christmas, the turk's cap has a holiday flavor too, like ornaments on a Texas Christmas tree.


I'm calling this a Lazarus mum. It was a table decoration at my 2009 National Night Out party. I put it in the compost, and it sprouted up in this bed. I guess it came up from seed.

The esperanza is another late bloomer. Everyone else's flowered all summer. These are its first blooms.


Finally, salvia greggii, a sure sign it's fall.

Happy bloom day. Head over to May Dreams to see what's blooming in other gardens.

Bi-colored Beauties

After the rains and with the dip in the temperature, everything in my landscape is refreshed (including the gardener). Right now, I am loving the two-in-one color displays from a few of my plants.


This Burgundy To Green Coleus started its life with a thin necklace of lime ringing each maroon leaf. As the temperatures have changed, the burgundy has receded and the green has encroached. You can get an idea of what the young plant looked like from the faded leaf near the top of this picture.


I have two varieties of purple shamrock planted in the same bed. One has solid plum colored leaves and the other (a pass along from MomMom) has deep purple leaves with violet splotches. To complete the monochrome pallet, these plant send up a few delicate lavender blooms on separate stems.


My Archduke Charles rose bushes have about fifty blooms each. The flower petals change color throughout the day, going from light pink to fuchsia. Each flower is in a different stage of the process so from a distance, it looks like I have multicolored hedges.

Bloom Day - Shades of Purple

Apparently, in garden blogging culture, the 15th of every month is Bloom Day, when bloggers share photos of flowers in bloom. For my first Bloom Day, I chose the theme "shades of purple."
 

This Purple Shamrock or Oxalis Regnelli is a pass along plant from MomMom. I love the texture that you can see on the leaves. If you have flickr, it's worth the extra click to view the enlarged photo.
 

Black and Blue Salvia (the most striking bloomer in my garden right now) and Catmint. It's hard to see the individual Catmint flowers, but their shape echos the salvia's (a good principle of garden design). Both of these plants are in my backyard border.

I planted this Larkspur from seed. It's well past its peak, but it still has a few blooms. I haven't pulled it up yet because I am waiting for all of the seed pods to spill their contents. The seedlings that sprout in the winter will be the reward for my patience now.

And finally, Dwarf Plumbago (Ceratostigma plumbaginoides).
Happy Bloom Day!