So...here's what blooming in my garden...in November

Iberis sempiervirens >:-( A critter ate most of the petals (I've had a large number of petals eaten for the last three months), and there are more buds on the stalk just to the right of the flowers

My annual poppy seeds are sprouting >:-(

Lavender looks too happy for it to be November >:-(

Tiarella/heuchera/heucherella >:-( On the bright side, these guys were 3-leaf rescues at the most from the neglected/tired bed and they have taken off

My bloody cranesbill that I slashed into small divisions and transplanted has decided it's time to bloom again >:-(

Catmint is blooming again-again, (is that what you would say for the third bloom?)

And, some things are not time-traveling, so I have my first blooms on my small 'Hillside Sheffield Pink' mums, about which the cold, but alive, bees are happy. They were muy muy pequeña this spring when they arrived from Select Seeds. Wondered if I'd get any blooms at all. Plants are still very small, but I luuurve planting small root systems so I don't mind. So much easier to plant them when they're small, and I like that the roots mature more naturally as they grow. A couple of the other mums have flowers with petals eaten off.

Thyme is still tagging along

The new peonies I planted in September seem to be healthy and taking to their new spot. I've been advised to bury them deeper. I always leave mine too shallow, often with the very top exposed, because I don't want the to end up too deep as soil accumulates over them. I'll add some compost to them soon.

What a difference a zone makes! I have nothing blooming and no bees. However my tall snapdragons look exactly like your Iberis sempiervirens, with the tops all eaten off, by deer I assume. Your lavender and pink mums look lovely, Deanna.

Love the mums with the bees, deannatoby, but those peony eyes look awfully vulnerable bare like that!

Asarum: The Powwow echinacea seems like a worthy plant to have - I've lost a lot of "designer echinacea" and I'd given up on them.

The one plant I have blooming is Geranium macrorrhizum 'Ingwersen's Variety' which usually blooms in May! This year's warm fall seems to have induced some of the plants (not all of them) to rebloom. I first noticed it a few weeks ago so I don't know how long this has been going on. It's a little startling with the cotoneaster berries.

They're talking about our first hard freeze tomorrow night (Friday) and a repeat on Saturday night. We haven't even had a frost yet. That should be the end of the geranium flowers but maybe the foliage will turn a fall color.

Claire

For the first time, my winterberries are fruiting. I had hoped that the native males would pollinate them, but they haven't, so two years ago I found a compatible male at a late season sale, and it bloomed this year so that my females got fertilized.

Hooray for biology! If that's a current photo, I see your bushes still have leaves. I thought winterberries were the very common bushes with red berries growing wild along every roadside, but here they have all lost their leaves. I love seeing them by the road, but don't have any room for them on my property right now. Am I confusing my bushes?

Nope, Deanna, not confusing your bushes. This was taken just before our cold snap. The wild ones have all lost their leaves here also, but this one, 'Winter Red', I believe has a more southern provenance and so hangs onto its leaves for a longer time period. Or perhaps the site being a bit less wet than most of the wild ones contributes? Who knows, but it always has leaves after the ones in the swamps around here.

Yesterday I wasn't able to get photos to load, but here is our first snow of the year. It was supposed to be just rain, but we got both more precipitation than expected and colder temperatures, so some of it came down as snow late afternoon. It made a messy commute since it wasn't predicted.

Like a couple of others, my Iberis/perennial candytuft is still blooming, even after a couple of nights in the lower 20's and the heavy, wet snow.

Magnolia 'Leonard Messel' is a three season plant in my garden, with spring flowers, fall color, and huge silver buds on gray branches all winter. Since it's in a perennial bed with lots of more interesting flowers and foliage during late spring and summer, it is just part of the background in warm weather. Here it is last week before the high winds stripped it of foliage. Prior to this rich chestnut color, it was a beautiful clear yellow for a couple of weeks when nothing but Fothergilla, dogwood, beech, and oak still had foliage color.

Forgot to post this photo taken the day after Thanksgiving. This has been a banner year for winterberry holly/Ilex verticillata. I passed these bushes in a wet spot along side the road in Andover, NH but my commute to work has some that rival these in brilliance.

Beautiful, Babs! The seed head photo is excellent. I’m glad you uploaded the photo of the Iberia because now I don’t have to. We are getting our first snow of the year, and mine still has flowers. My friends in Birmingham, Alabama, got at least five inches. I believe that is a White Pre-Christmas.

That winterberry stand in Andover is amazing. Such brilliance! Really lovely. I have probably 100 species of bushes/trees that I would like to have large swaths of, winterberry being one of them. Too bad they won’t fit on my little two acres.

Maybe not huge swaths, but there are some relatively small winterberry cultivars. Is there room for a couple of females with the male tucked behind?