Bloom Day - Normal Can Be Nice Too

     This Bloom Day finds just about everything in its place where it belongs. There have been no recent bouts of severe weather; we haven't even had a frost yet, with the lows dipping no further than the low 40's. Some of what I have to show this month was shown in October, and looking back over previous November Bloom Days, I really don't have much new to offer. As the tired phrase goes, it is what it is.

     I brought this variegated Plectranthus home from work, it was a leftover from our summer plantings, and what a trouble-free plant it has been. Recently the powers that be concluded coleus is really Plectranthus, and you can see the family resemblance in the flower.

      Ricin 'New Zealand Purple' was yet another leftover, and I love the backlit afternoon light coming through the foliage. The pink azaleas are my neighbor's, but I don't mind borrowing the color, which also looks good with Salvia 'Wendy's Wish'. 

     Late last spring it was hard for me to settle on plain old wax leaf begonias for my three porch planters, but I could not think of anything that could handle three different light situations and still look good. Here it is mid-November, and they are blooming their heads off. 

     The camellia below is 'Autumn Rocket', which was developed locally by the late Dr. Habel in Suffolk. He bred many camellias and kept them straight by numbering them, but he did allow a few to be developed, named, and sold commercially, and this is one of those. It is a narrow camellia, only growing about 3' wide but 10' tall. Interesting story: on our last trip home from Colorado, we had stopped at a rest area in Nowheresville, Missouri. While I was walking the dogs, a man seeing our license plate asked what part of Virginia we were from. As we were talking I found out he was Dr. Habel's son, and he and his wife were also heading home to Virginia from Colorado. Of course I had to tell him how much I liked his father's camellia. 

     Garden Bloggers Bloom Day is held on the 15th of each month and is hosted by Carol at May Dreams Gardens.

Chanticleer in Mid-October

     Last year I attended the Perennial Plant Conference at Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, and had such a good time that I wanted to return this year, but wanted to also include a couple of my co-workers. On the way up we were able to spend an afternoon at Chanticleer, and on the way back home we visited Longwood Gardens, both of which are two of the conference's co-sponsors. One of my co-workers had never been to Chanticleer, which might be considered deprivation for anyone interested in gardening, professionally or otherwise. I've been fortunate to have visited this "pleasure garden" on three different occasions, and each time has been as exciting, as intriguing, and as full of discovery as the first. Obviously the best way to experience Chanticleer is in person, but if you want to know more now, you can visit their web site, or read an earlier post of mine, or also see any of several other bloggers' perspectives (Pam's at Digging, Carolyn's Shade Garden, Donna's at Garden Walk Garden Talk, James' at View from Federal Twist, to name a few). This post, however, will be mostly photos.

     These photos are but a few that I took during our visit. If you would like to see my complete set of Chanticleer pictures from both this fall and from the summer of 2011, here is the link to my Flickr page.