These are the last blooms to grace the October flower beds as we head into the chilly temps of winter.
Rose Sugar Moon displays some pink tinged petals that records the temperature swings we’ve experienced lately. As usual, it boasts a lovely fragrance, regardless of weather.
The salvias are showing off some fiery blooms. I’m quite fond of the salvia regla’s tidy upright habit and the splashy foliage on Dancing Flame salvia splendens.
We neglected the front yard beds over the height of summer (June-August) and emerged over the Labor Day weekend to perform some maintenance. I spent a couple of weekends in September cleaning up the beds, trimming back some shrubs, and uprooting the casualties. Some plants obviously did not take too well the stretch of 100+ temperatures in August, most noticeably the young azaleas and our Waterfall Japanese Maple. At first we thought the drip line system to blame, but when we had a contractor come out to inspect our sprinkler system, he recommended that the drip system be run a minimum of 20 minutes–much more than the 5 minute run we had originally programmed. Safe to say that the plants are much happier going into Fall.
The cleanup obviously opened up some gaps in the garden beds to introduce new plantings as well.
Now if I can only muster up the energy to get some spring-flowering bulbs into the ground!
Despite all the excitement that 2 new furbabies introduces to the household, I did still get to witness some really cool blooms decorating our new front yard landscape. The tall red cypress, red columbine, Crimson Pirate daylilies, and Picasso callas are just some of the vivid sights now showing their colors. Even the waterlogged gardenia managed to push out some blooms…
The highly anticipated Pumpkin Pie Coreopsis in bud and bloom was slightly disappointing for appearing mostly like a typical tickseed, just with a little more orange in color:
Was rewarded by a visit from a hummingbird earlier this week, who honed in on the Bright Eyes salvia in the front garden bed. So pleased to know that the wildlife hasn’t been deterred from visiting the loud and noisy construction in my neighborhood. I snapped some pics of bee-, bird-, and butterfly -friendly bloomers.
Our new maples have finally arrived and transplanted into our yard. Both Shantung maple and Viridis Japanese maple arrived in 30 gallon pots. It took some muscle to get them planted.
