Fall Splendor

What's that old saying? Fall would be my favorite season if it wasn't followed by winter. We are lucky in the Bay Area, getting to enjoy a lengthy fall season and especially for those of us near the coast a mild winter. Right now, in the middle of a three day heat wave, I'd gladly take some cooler weather. And rain. Somehow our gardens march on, able to survive our crazy weather.
Speaking of tough plants, this is the time of year for salvias. There are so many great ones, it's hard to keep up. I have a dozen different ones in my garden, the latest (yet to be planted) is the exquisite S. splendens 'Sao Borja.' First you have the rich burgundy colored flowers and then, surprise, this salvia likes some shade. It's native to the higher elevations of Brazil and so likes cooler temps. It's a bit frost tender so will need to be protected. It grows quickly, getting to 6' in a single season.

This little glass bird is a new addition to my garden. He's keeping a lookout in the back yard that is also my bird sanctuary. I'm curious to see if any real birds will take an interest. "No answer?" they tweet. "Ahh, you must be the strong, silent type."

Azalea 'Mangetsu.' It's just now coming into its blooming season. I bought this variety many moons ago at Moraga Garden Center and now I'm not sure anyone is selling it anymore.

One last shop of my trippy Sunrise Serenade morning glory. Talk about hot pink ...

My Begonia 'Calypso' was a late starter but it's in full bloom mode now. Calling it a showoff only encourages it.

What's that expression? "A weed is only a plant you don't want in your garden." I did indeed plant this purple form of Campanula punctata a few years back and now it's self seeded throughout the entire bed. What you don't see from this angle is the spotting inside the throat, a pattern I once described as a dusting of confectioner's sugar.

Finally a good shot of these colorful guys, a Portulaca mix. 

Here's a shot of my neighbor's Black and Brown Boar tomato plant that I've been caring for. Great color and yummy too.

Although it's still in the foliage stage, my new Protea neriifolia 'Pink Ice' is already showing the characteristic pink spines on the leaves. The flowers on most neriifolias are spectacular and Pink Ice is no exception. Can't wait.

What's more exciting -- watching paint dry or waiting for one's Puya to bloom? Hmm, let me think about it. Gimme a minute. Nope, can't say which sends more shivers down my spine. This Puya is in year eight with nary a bloom. I'm going to have to eat more health foods so I can live long enough to see it bloom.

My Tecoma x smithii keeps pumping out the gorgeous peachy-orange blooms. Fabulous.We have a specimen of the yellow-flowered Tecoma stans at the entrance to our Grand Lake Ace nursery and it's been in continuous bloom since early July.

Plectranthus coleoides. This lovely, ground cover type plectranthus has made itself happily at home under a fir tree, where not a whole lot else has prospered.

It may be just a New Guinea impatiens but this one has the loveliest rose-pink flower and it's doing a good job of bringing interest to a somewhat dark & shady bed.

Still a great many people's favorite salvia, S. patens has the richest blue flowers of just about any plant. If once upon a time, a single rare tulip in Holland was worth enough to single-handedly buy you a house (it was), then this exquisite blue flower must be worth something special.

Reason number 27 why people love Haworthias. This H. obtusa has translucent tips that sparkle in the sun. Fab green color too. Almost looks yummy enough to be a cool dessert on a hot day.

After the rain ...

For those of us in the Bay Area, the early morning rain was a real blessing. I only wished I'd woken up early enough to see it. Walking outside the air was so fresh and the garden seemed especially happy. Hopefully this was just the appetizer and more serious rainfall is on the way.
Here are more photos from the garden. It continues its march toward the fall, proceeding to the music only it can hear.

Found these mushrooms up in a shady part of my garden. They're a curious kind, with flat, disc-like heads and quite white. Don't know that I've ever seen them before. What's that Alice? One kind makes you small and one kind ...

Tricyrtis 'Lemon Lime.' I haven't had much luck growing this variety. It always seems to poop out before blooming but I do have a couple of flowers on it right now. A very handsome toad it is.

Speaking of toad lilies, here's one that comes back faithfully every year, more prolific each succeeding year.

For those wondering what all the fuss is about with the rare South American shrub Deppea splendens, here's an idea. Coppery-red calyxes sprout golden tubular flowers on the thinnest, wiriest stems possible. It will eventually make a large shrub but mine is still a very modest size. It's so anxious to make a good impression that we've had specimens in 4" pots produce their first flowers!

Fuchsia 'Nettala." Here you get to see the "dancing dolls," the four cup-shaped petals that dangle below the upper recurved sepals. Someone even described them as square dancers doing a do-si-do.

My Tropical Corner is continuing to evolve. That's fire ginger in the foreground, a red banana behind it and black bamboo in the background. Still waiting for the macaws to arrive ...

Heliotropium arborescens 'Alba.' As I've often mentioned, this variety is substantially more fragrant than the purple kinds. And longer lived. Whether the fragrance smells like vanilla or talc powder to you, it's a one of a kind fragrance.

Speaking of Ones-of-a-kind, I nominate this Viola 'Brush Strokes.' I've never seen that kind of "painted" pattern on a viola before.

'Quick, freeze ' thought the gecko and he has yet to move in the two years since. Cagey guy. That's the ever vigorous Dicentra scandens tickling his backside.

Pelargonium crispum 'Variegated Golden Lemon' Crispum indeed! And, yup, it does earn its lemon moniker, exuding a very sweet lemon fragrance.

Let me introduce you to ... the color red.Yowza, it simply doesn't get any redder than this Mini-Famous Double Scarlet calibrachoa. As the saying goes, so red that light just falls into it.

Many will recognize this variegated ground cover -- Silene uniflora. Good for cascading, for rock gardens, even for hanging baskets. Tough little guy too.

Gold stars all around for those who recognize this odd little plant. Hint: it's a ground cover form of a native, fragrant shrub. Yes, it's Monardella macrantha and its flowers are at this young stage bigger than the plant itself! Monardella villosa, known as Coyote Mint, is a CA native found all over northern and central California. This decumbent form is also endemic to the state and its calling card is its extravagant sprays of red flowers.

Of course everyone knows this guy. Just kidding. Hemizygia? I'd never heard of it until two years ago and even its nomenclature is under dispute. It's related to the Plectranthus genus and that's about as definitive as we're going to get. Sure is pretty though.

This was one of those "what-the-heck" shots and it sort of works. The silver foliage is from my sprawling Centaurea gymnocarpa plant and the flower from a nearby Salvia canariensis (which oh by the way also has silvery foliage).

Here's that show-off Zinnia State Fair with my glorious Caryopteris 'Hint of Gold' in the foreground. Nice combo.

My unassuming Hebe speciosa has kind of taken over this corner of my walkway and it takes virtually no attention at all.

Here's another shot of my curiously named Bidens 'Hawaiian Flare Orange Drop,' which gets first prize for longest and oddest common name. Still, it has an awfully pretty flower for a bidens.

I was going for the surreal with this photograph and, well, I sort of got it. It's a Heavenly Blue morning glory but it could just as easily be a spaceship from the alien race living on the third moon of Jupiter. It just sort of hovers in space and the throat looks it might open up to reveal a portal to another dimension. Okay, time to cut back on the Sci-fi ...

Speaking of curious common names, here's another photo of my fab Portulaca ' Fairytales Cinderella.' I'm not making these names up. I'm just reading them off the grower's tags. I think maybe they have waaay too much time on their hands.

Though the blooms are tiny and unassuming, there's something sweet about Calamintha flowers. My cats certainly think so.

Though this isn't my photo I came out this morning to find that my Iris pallida variegata had produced a flower. That was exciting news as it hasn't bloomed in three years and it's late in the season to boot. Ahh, another reminder that gardens march to their drummer. Of course, besides the lovely color, the flowers are known to smell like grape soda. And so they do.

Rain, not rain

Did it rain last night or did I just dream it rained? Hard to tell from the ground here in Oakland. What we all are experiencing today is a kind of humidity we're not used to. It's strange to wake up to warm, sticky weather. It makes me appreciate our dry weather, though of course we desperately need the rain. Our gardens soldier forward, with those of us in cooler coastal regions lucky to have milder temperatures, thus a need for less water for the plants.
Big news in my garden today is one of my Billbergias,  a gift from noted bromeliad collector Bill Holliday, having sent up a colorful bloom spike almost literally overnight. It's the first photo posted here and I'm just so excited I could explode. I need to learn more about tropicals as a large group and bromeliads as a subset. Getting them to bloom is still a hit and miss affair. I do recommend bromeliads to everyone; they're one of the easiest groups to grow and many have colorful foliage to enjoy even when they're not in bloom.
Okay, here are the photos. Is it really mid-September? When one doesn't have kids, summer kind of slides into late summer which slides into fall, with not a lot of change in the weather sometimes. There is however a gradual shift in emphasis to the shrubs and fall perennials in my garden so I guess gardens know the score more precisely than we humans.

Here's the Billbergia that got me so excited. I need some help in identifying which variety it is. You would think the maroon foliage and white spots would narrow it down but only slightly. I think it may be a B. 'Breauteana.' At least the flower does. I didn't manage to get this shot in perfect focus (maybe because I was too excited?)

This cute little guy is Corydalis lutea. It is known to self-seed and gradually colonize an area. I love the color and delicate clusters.

Begonia 'Irene Nuss.' It's easy to see why this prolific cane begonia is at the top of many people's lists. Definitely one of my faves. The flower clusters are large and an extravagant pink but it's also the scalloped foliage that grabs you. 

My split-leaf Philodendron just keeps producing larger and larger leaves. Its top level roots have gone everywhere and I need to keep trimming it or I can't get around it to get to the west side of the back yard.

Last week I posted a photo of this Begonia 'Calypso' in the midst of opening. Here it is fully open. Incredibly dense and such cheerful colors.

My succulent table. The silver, spidery plant in front is a Tillandsia. Directly behind it is an Echeveria 'Black Prince.' Behind and to the right is the incredibly floriferous Crassula alba v. parvisepala. 

My Epilobium 'Orange Carpet' has sprung into bloom and behind it that single purple flower is the resilient Gomphrena 'Fireworks.' I'd say that the Epilobium is keeping up in the fireworks department.

And this is a ... Well, it's a Lotus (you knew that) but I thought it was fun to shoot the dense mass of foliage without the telltale flowers. Seen in this light, it's pretty fab just like this.

Zinnia 'State Fair.' I'm becoming more intrigued by this plant all the time. Here it's in the process of opening and the juvenile petals are still a peachy-gold color, not yet having acquired the red of the mature flower.

I managed to catch a nice optical illusion, shooting this blue Echeveria. The 'gold eye' is simple a tiny pool of water refracting the sun's rays. Still, it's a neat trick.

Here's a better shot of my Oxalis latifolia. I love the lime-green foliage as much as the flowers.

Last week I took a closeup shot of one of the leaves of my Beschorneria albiflora. Here's the whole plant. A little water now and again has kept it greener. Still waiting for it to bloom a second time. The first time was spectacular.

Trying to take a good shot of my Tecoma x smithii is a challenge, as its branches hang downwards and thus so do the flower clusters. So that's my hand holding them up in the lower left. Check out the interesting bean-like seed pods.

Here's my favorite bulb-you've-never-heard-of -- Bessera elegans. For such tiny bulbs they pack quite a punch and multiply quickly. Here the sea of Coral Drops as they're known look like parasols being lifted by the breeze.

Speaking of plants that just don't know when to quit, this red Salpiglossis not only came back for a second year, when I pruned it back in July it responded by producing a new flowering spike. And who can resist Painted Tongues as they're called?