Yikes @forever_a_newbie_VA8 you have so much still happening in your garden. (I love both sages)

rouge I was thinking the same thing! Newbie you've got a ton of stuff! I was just outside cleaning out beds to put down mole repellent, and I was thinking how pathetic I am because I left standing about half a dozen mildewed, single-stem zinnias with one puny bloom each, just because I didn't have the heart to remove the blooms lol.

Although honestly I think I'd still have some good stuff if we had gotten any rain in the 10 or 12 weeks!

:)

Dee

@rouge21_gw (CDN Z5b/6a) @diggerdee zone 6 CT thanks! we are at a warmer zone and it normally gets really cold only after new year. We also have had a very dry fall this year. No rain for over 6 weeks.

Not in my garden but I liked this white camellia in a London park.

Most of what is bloming in my garden now are salvias, annuals, and roses. I also have a reblooming iris doing its thing.

imortality

’So Cool Pale Blue’ Salvia

‘Pink Preference Salvia’ (I think, but not 100% certain)

‘Wendy’s Wish’ Salvia

’Mes Azur’ Salvia - also one of the first perennials to bloom in spring

I think this one is black and blue, but I’m not positive. it is some variety of Salvia guaranitica

Dahlia abd Zinnias

Tithonia

Gomphrena ‘Fireworks’ with Amsonia foliage in the background.

Nicotiana ’Purple Scentsation’

rouge that rose is exquisite. The only plant still blooming to any decent degree is Rudbeckia triloba, though I did notice Chrysanthemum 'Clara Curtis' on Saturday still showing. I have had a few frosts here so I will be living vicariously through those of you in warmer zones. Really beautiful forever_a_newbie, Markay & floral

Just love those salvias @Markay MD-Zone 7B.

'peren' lucky you that your triloba is still showing "to any decent degree". I say this we have tons of triloba but they have pretty well all finished flowering.

Some of my roses now.

Yellow Submarine. The blue in the picbis ageratum Blue Horizon. This rose is usually a paler yellow, but I love this lemon yellow in the cooler temps.

Lady Ashe, aka Dixieland Linda. I love how the cooler temps of fall sliw the opening of roses so each bloom holds a bit longer.

Rosemantic Red

Perle d’Or

@Markay MD-Zone 7B, I especially like that Lady Ashe rose....the pink is striking.

@Markay MD-Zone 7B, I really like your Perle d’Or picture. It has dreamy quality.

Thanks to the cool and sunny autumn days my roses are also blooming well. Top Cream

Golden Opportunity finally has the true golden color. It also has strong scent jiust like Julia Child its parent

Raspberry Cup cake

Evelyn has been very stringent in blooming this year and now she has a couple blooms to make up

Fun in the Sun blooms are huge and full petals.

Firefighters

All above roses are with much stronger fragrance in the cool weather

@forever_a_newbie_VA8, has Golden Opportunity had good blackspot resistance for you? i was tempted by this one, but I also know it’s parent, Julia Child, gets a lot of blackspot in my garden.

@Markay MD-Zone 7B, Golden Opportunity has been very healthy and till now very few spots and barely dropped any leaves yet.. However this is only the first year so I need to wait and see next year.

It was own-root from HCR coming in spring and is now over 4.5 feet

It’s been weeks since anything has bloomed here. My Nov highlight is this grocery store bouquet. :)

I grew tall blue ageratum from seed and it is still going strong and it was tolerated our drought with much grace. The powder blue compliments all my roses.

Here it is with Annie Laurie McDowell.

I love ageratum also @Markay MD-Zone 7B. We have incorporated the short one in a mass planting for several years now but they are all 'gone' for the season as -1C has brought them down.

Our pot of ajania is now starting to show its stuff...almost mid November!

@Markay MD-Zone 7B. I love ageratum also. Unfortunately last year none of the seeds sprouted.

Graham Thomas rose really puts a show on this November afternoon

Camellias are in full bloom

Is this one mammoth mums?

Pink coral bell with Jefferson Park mums

the only surviving annuals in my yard, looking pretty amazing for November 16!

looking pretty amazing for November 16!

It aint natural I say :(.

I had to smile seeing this still blooming corydalis ochroleuca as it was a gift from @woodyoak zone 5 southern Ont., Canada several years ago when she came by to visit.

Getting a head start on spring 2025?

One of my November highlights is to spend a few rounds clipping things from my gardens to fill the windowboxes before the potting mix in them freezes solid. I still have more time…

Most of my annuals out in the garden finally bit the dust. Honestly I can't quite tell if the salvia is still going or frozen in place lol.

The annuals on the patio are only mostly dead, to quote The Princess Bride. The coleus and half the begonias are zapped. Oddly, literally half the begonias in some pots are dead while the other half of the same plant in the same pot is still alive lol. Geraniums are STILL gorgeous and pumping out blooms. It really ain't natural!

I have a small pink azalea in bloom. Rather surprised, as it is only a second year planting. I was happy to get blooms this past spring lol, never mind in November! And I do still have some berries on my callicarpas and my symphoricarpos.

partymusic your window box is lovely. Will that last all the way through winter? Or does it start wilting at some point? I've seen this done with greens and berries (and am hoping to have enough of both some day to do it myself in my pots) but I love the way you used sedum (I think?) and some grass heads? Very nice.

Love the dandelion rouge lol. Bet he'll invite some friends to join him in spring.....

:)

Dee

in this mess we’ve got Tithonia, Gomphrena, some Zinnias and grasses. We haven’t had a killing frost so the annuals just keep going.

the perennials are all but but done. Stokesia, salvias, a hardy fuchsia and panicle asters are the only perennials still blooming.

and then there are the roses.

crazy love is one of many offering up the last roses of the season.

Bet he'll invite some friends to join him in spring.....

You can be cruel sometimes @diggerdee zone 6 CT ;).

And even today, November 19, "Julia" is putting out legit flowers.

Thank you, diggerdee! I’m envious at how much more gardening time you get in z6 vs my z5. The windowboxes will look just like this until it starts getting warm again — like April or May before they start to decline. I just did some more harvesting and have so far cut thuja, rhododendron, spruce, pine, euonymous, and the seedheads are from agastache, balloon flower, and sedum. Same box with more in it. And I just found flower buds on my Pink Lemonade honeysuckle vine! I also have a small Thanksgiving cactus that’s blooming nicely. Indoors. :)

Lol rouge! Beautiful rose btw! Yours too Markay. I was hoping for some late blooms on mine - oh! Actually, I DO have one or two buds out there. I keep forgetting. Earlier in the spring I impulse-bought 2 six-packs of miniature roses. I had never seen them come that way and they were in full beautiful bloom. Of course in my garden they started to decline, but I have to say they have indeed clung to life and there is a little pink one in a pot which I noticed two days ago had two fat pink buds. I will have to go see if they are still there and in bloom.

partymusic I am envious right back at ya, lol. I soooo want window boxes. I love them to begin with, and I have a cape style house so I think they would look charming. WIndow boxes and trellises on the house. But my husband always nixes it when I bring it up. Not only does he not want to drill into the siding to hang them, but he keeps saying they will attract bugs. I kinda get it - we've been dealing with carpenter ants for at least 25 of the 30 years we've lived here. But I keep telling him that plants in window boxes don't attract carpenter ants, and honestly, they can climb up the side of the house just as easily as climbing a trellis lol. Ah well, maybe just as well. My dreams of a rose-covered trellis on the house would probably turn out the same as my dinky little black-spotted mini roses haha!

A former co-worker used to have several Christmas cacti at work. They were all gorgeous. She gave me one or two but as I've said before, the doorway to my house is the threshhold of doom to any plant. The ones at work got very little natural light but did well, and we used to call them the Halloween cactus, the thanksgiving cactus, the Christmas cactus - different ones bloomed at those times. I have no idea if they are different cultivars and are supposed to bloom at different times or it just happened lol.

FINALLY today we are getting some much-need rain! I don't think it's rained since August here, if not even July. Too bad, since with the unseasonably warm weather I might have had more things in bloom, but they all died from drought!

:)

Dee

I don't think it's rained since August here, if not even July.

That is terrible Dee! Its gotta be better ie wetter next season...right?

I alwys enjoy the Fall colouring of Japanese Forest Grass

Markay I love your stokesia. So blue like a cotton flower. I was gifted a few baby plants by a friend. They haven’t bloomed this year. Eagerly waiting for next fall

Japanese maples are always an autumn favorite. Below a camellia after gusting wind and rains overnight

A pure white offspring from the seeds of the pink parent

Moonlight in Paris rose

Dee, my window boxes don't attract any bugs at all! :p My BIL made my boxes and hung them for me. He put two large bolts immediately under the trim piece beneath each window... you can barely notice them. Then he attached strap hangers to the backs of the window boxes. To hang or remove the boxes, I only need to lift so that the straps slide off or onto those bolts. Brilliant. :) I cannot believe you've had such a bad drought! I'm sorry to hear it. I'm in central NY and it's been normal here.

Everyone's plants and flowers are gorgeous! I have never seen a Camelia in person!

Amsonia foliage

i planted Amsonia as plugs in 2019. Now they are close to 5 ft wide and that’s with pruning!

This was them back in the spring.

forever a newbie, that Moonlight in Paris is absolutely stunning! So beautiful and delicate looking. I've eyed that from time to time and I may have to give it a try.

Partymusic I wish I could convince my husband that a bug will crawl up the side of a house if it really wants to, window boxes or not lol. I did once try to hang these pouches. They were a plastic-y fabric, like a leaf bag or tarp, about 8 inches from top to bottom, and as wide as a window (roughly three feet) and they were divided into about half a dozen individual pouches or pockets. You attached eye bolts INSIDE, and then tied the attached rope/tether to the eye bolts. You closed the window on top of the tether and then planted the pouches. It sounded good in theory but I could never get them to balance - they always wanted to tip forward and the plants would be leaning out over the top.

We are VERY happy to be getting the precipitation, even if it came in the form of a wintry mix overnight. To think just about a week ago we had temps in the 80's! But so happy for the rain. I might be wrong but I think the last time we had rain was back in July, (oops, just double checked - this storm was actually in August) where it rained, in the next town over, something like 13 inches in 6-8 hours. The town was declared a federal emergency zone, as were a few other towns in the area. Sadly, two people were swept away by a river and died (in separate incidents). Roads were washed out and still not completely repaired. Schools closed and businesses went out of business. It was awful. And then a drought. Such extremes.....

I'm looking forward to getting my leaves finished up next week, pots pulled in the garage, stakes and cages and empty pots put away, and then on to browsing the seed catalogs! Somewhere in there I have to put down my shredded leaf mulch, but who knows when the ground will finally freeze here to do it?

:)

Dee

@diggerdee zone 6 CT, thanks! Moonlight in Paris is a reliable rose in all consideration. I got it as a bareroot in Homedepot last year and saw it again this spring. You might be able to spot one locally too

@Markay MD-Zone 7B, your Amsonia is wonderful

FINALLY pulled the last 3 of my geraniums this afternoon. I just didn't want to do it because they are still full and in bloom (and bud), but I also didn't want to risk losing them to sudden frost. So into the basement they go in the hopes that they survive the winter down there and save me a few bucks in the spring!

:)

Dee

Pretty geranium -- I hope they do survive for you! My father used to save them every which way... on screens in the attic, hung upside-down in the basement, in paper bags, and so on. He ran a cemetery! I grow mine in pots and bring the pots inside for the winter. I love having the blooms indoors.

@diggerdee zone 6 CT, the color of your geranium is lovely

Happy Thanksgiving🦃

I didn't see a December 2024 Highlights, so I thought I'd post this one photo of paperwihtes I bought last weekend, that are blooming....

Thank you, forever_a_newbie!

PM2, your paperwhites are beautiful and a needed bit of bloom on this cold day. I grew them once but could not stand the smell! Which very much disappointed me because I think they are elegant little flowers and who doesn't want live blooms on a winter day?

I've meant to try a different variety to see if the scent is different but I never seem to get around to the indoor winter bulbs. If I get them (which I haven't in years) it's usually at the this-is-REALLY-the-last-chance sales in late January lol. But even then I am on to seed-sowing so I don't bother.

Thanks for sharing those. Like I said, a lovely bit of bloom when it's 15 degrees outside!

:)

Dee

Dee, boy, I just picked up my computer and you posted at the same time. I always get a quick alert when I get a post on GW.

I bought these already potted up with moss around the base. I couldn't resist the clay pot, the moss, the stems of the bulbs about 1/3 of the way up and buds bulging. lol Just too tempting.

I know what you mean about the fragrance. I don't get these often. Sometimes I like the fragrance and other times, it's a little off. I was disappointed that these have no fragrance really. A tiny bit if you put your nose right in the flower.

And all the flowers are open and boy it'dosen;t last long.

I don't pot up my own bulbs...I tried it and just wasn't worth the trouble.

I can't wait for March when Hyacinths are available potted up at the grocery store. Those are really fragrant! Plus I can plant them in the ground when they are done and they always come up.

Still outside, I see the foliage of "Italian Arum" able to withstand very cold temps. The other night it was -8C/17F but even so it was looking fresh and upright.

Great pic @prairiemoon2 z6b MA. A few years ago I swore off planting "Paperwhites" as too often mine would be splindly with not enough flower.

I am cheating here by posting indoor grown orchids but the hellebores out there aren't close to blooming yet and my spring bulbs always rot away so...Rlc chomthong fancy and Perr. bangkok sunset from November and Den Hawaiian punch blooming now. Bonus, strepocarpus Amanda.

Love the Italian arum.