Equinox Blooms

Agalinis purpurea in full flush.

Cottony goldenaster and gulf fritillary

Dalea pinnata in full bloom

 Heavenly blue morning glory

 cosmos

Sunflowerz

I planted the sunflowers, morning glory, and cosmos seed in the last week of July, along with some squash, beans, and cow peas.  The beans and peas are about played out already, and the squash bugs and squash vine borers destroyed the squash, pretty much as soon as it started to produce.

physostegia

 pepperz

 nettle leaf sage

Long tailed skipper visits verbesina

forked blue curls  (Trichostema dichotomum)
 

Surprises in the weeds... Interesting year for watermelon this summer. My other patch produced early, and then developed a problem of blossom end rot, or something.
This patch was hit by a late spring frost, and looked like a loss, but pulled out all stops after the temp broke....

 Remember when it hit 108° way back at the end of June?

Since the temp broke in early July, the weather has been pleasant, with unusually regular rainfall. Shame about the rest of the country...

Mid-November

It's interesting that so many different ones were blossoming during October.
Comment from October's post.

Yeah... Middle Georgia is actually considered part of the sub-tropical south. We had our first frost last week, and there's still plenty of colour in the garden. I walked around with a camera today, in an attempt to record the mid-November garden...

To have butterflies, you need caterpillars.

Here's a coupla gulf frits.
(Be sure to click all the pics today!)

The butterflies they eventually become.

Close-up of the lantana that was so popular last month.

Sulfur yellow visits a turk's cap hibiscus

Zabulon Skipper

Buckeye Butterfly

Checkerspot butterfly

Catching grasshoppers.

Mustard greens.

Helianthus debilis

Spiderwort

Salvia coccinea

Monarda Punctata

Another Autumn

The Monarch butterflies seem to be flocking in preparation for migration. Bushes full of butterflies that can hardly be distinguished from the orange flowers...

see how many butterflies you can spot on the below photo. These pictures are all clickable...

I count 5 orange butterflies... among the orange flowers.

The bushes are large enough that shooting the entire bush results in not being able to even pick out the butterflies...

Gotta love bushes that grow and bloom despite the drought, that you don't have to do anything to protect from the local deer herds...



The lantana also attract the night flyers.





The agalinis are in full bloom.

Agalinis purpurea are pretty, and are host plant to the buckeye butterfly, which makes them an asset to the meadow.

Their short-comings are that they are annuals and strictly Autumn bloomers, and need disturbed soil to come up each year.

Here's an interesting flower, 'Summer's farewell' (Dalea pinnata)

This cool plant has ferny leaves closely resembling moss verbena, which was what I thought I had when the babies initially showed up...

Later, when the plants grew upright, rather than prostrate as expected, I could see that it was something else. These little button flowers are interesting...

The plants appear to be biennial, which coupled with their short bloom time rather negates their value in the flower border.