Fall flowers

My husband announced to me this weekend, "Do you know how many plants are flowering in the backyard?!" I guessed 15, to which he said,"I counted 18!" This is our little 'ol postage stamp, inner-city garden - in Fall.  And we'll be blooming all winter.

The crazy fuschia is doing great.  This is the one we got at the Botanical Garden Plant Sale 4 or 5 years ago (I'm too lazy to go digging through the tags), and had to cut almost to the ground after the killer frost.  Shoshanna fell in love with it.  Musta heard her, 'cause next I know there's a volunteer baby in the curly willow pot just waiting to be dug up.  Very cooperative!

The Salvia puberula looks amazing now that it's established and not getting beat up by roofers and squirrel chasing dogs.

Yep, it's fuzzy like that to the naked eye from far
away...

The side garden is frankly embarrassing. There is NO path left to the door. Diane would be horrified.  I loved it this summer when I could open the door for air and enjoy complete privacy.

But now I got a real mess!  I got sucked into not pruning in March because I felt bad taking nectar away from the hummingbirds.  Now the pineapple sage (Salvia elegens) is across the sidewalk and in the driveway, pretty well choking out the lavendar.

The scary part is the limelight. This is it's first year.  It's beautiful!  It's growing into the garage!  Again!  Doug hacked a big branch off last month.

Of course Pinkie (and the rest of them) love it, and fight constantly over the Salvias.  It is not safe in my garden.  Any moment you can get buzzed by hummers in battle.  They are especially fond of the Mexican Bush Sage, which is halfway across the front lawn (sorry Bill).

Tillandsia sp?

Kapow!! I was SO excited by the 7 spikes this year! And of course had to share.

But being a lazy gardener, I have no clue what species this guy is. Well, not lazy in this case; I scrounged it from a bin at Home Depot. So I went online to find the species, and found pictures of people holding football sized clumps with 30+ spikes that kind of look like mine, but not quite. At first I thought it was an albertiana, but the purple coming out of the magenta is tubed, not a tri-petal shape.

I've had this plant for almost 12 years, so go figure how old a 30 spiker must be.


Maybe an Aeranthos Bergeri Hybrid? I don't know - the foliage doesn't look right. There are 600 species and umpteen hybrids. Quite a beauty!

I'm pretty certain this one is tillandsia ixioides (another Home Depot find - not that I go there for plants; from back in the days when there was a Home Depot run every weekend to fix something or another).

I totally want to build a real pergola (as opposed to the mutant bench thing that came with the house), line it with a misting system, and get more tillandsias. That's where you'll find me on hot summer days...