Blooms of Fall

Fall has arrived to southern Texas, bringing it's cool evenings and mid 80s afternoon highs. The bees have been busily working and the blooms are becoming abundant in my backyard. I love opening the blinds and gazing at all of the beautiful colors in the backyard when I'm home.

One of the drawbacks of being in school full-time through the spring, summer and fall is that I haven't been able to devote the amount of time needed to my back beds. By the time I got around to getting rid of the weeds brought on by last winter, and removing the plants that were killed by the winter frosts and chilling breezes that we were blessed with last year, my Coral Vine had gone wild and was sporting full flushes of blooms. This isn't a bad thing, however it hosts hundreds of bees every day, working dilligently around the whole vine. (Yes, I have TONS of seeds and will have many more seedlings this next spring.) While pouring mulch in a nearby flowerbed, I made several bees angry and did get chased a few times. So that flowerbed is off limits to my gardening hands until the vine dies back in the winter.

The Coral Vine was a gift from my sweet Aunt Cyndi. I'd received it as a seedling from her one year, and it took off and makes the bakyard absolutely gorgeous every year from Spring through Fall. Because I haven't been able to keep it trimmed back this year however, it has grown into 3 of my neighbor's backyards, including one's very tall tree. Yikes. I hope they don't mind!

The long yellow and orange flowers that are hanging in these photos are from some of my Angel Trumpet plants (Brugmansia). These grow pretty tall like trees, and have beautiful blooms. They respond very well to lots of general fertilizer, but I haven't been doing that this year. They still look stunning to me!

One of my evergreen favorites is this Tangerine Beauty Crossvine. It's full of dark green leaves year-round, and has massive flushes of blooms in the Spring. It also helps hide some of the car wash next door from our view in the backyard. One of these days, I may have to cut this one back significantly (if we ever need to get a new fence); but for now, this one is quite stunning and really does the job.

And I can't leave out one of Celeste's favorites, the Ruellia brittoniana (aka. Katie Blue). This one grows in small clusters and was also a gift from my sweet Aunt Cyndi.

Here's to each of you and your families; I hope you have a wonderful Fall!