NOVEMBER IN THE GARDEN

Copper Canyon daisy, Tagetes lemmonii, is the hands down November favorite in my central Texas garden. The plant is daylight sensitive so it blooms during the fall. It is deer resistant and can withstand the fierce summer heat of Texas. For this reason it will do well on the west side of the house. I photographed this plant this morning before the 9/10" rainfall. It has spent the summer in the vegetable garden. Not the place where I really want it, but this is where I planted the young plant just before we went away in April so that it would not be stressed from lack of  watering during the heat of summer ( the vegetable beds are on a drip system).  A month later it was too big to move. As it grew larger I would brush past it as I walked down the path and the air would fill with its distinctive fragrance. I suspect this is what keeps the deer away.

I frequently put young plants next to a drip when I have to leave the garden for any length of time so I always have flowers in the vegetable beds.

My garden relies heavily on serendipity. This blanket flower and the alyssum have seeded here in the sunken garden. Both are prolific re-seeders. The air is filled with the sweet fragrance of alyssum and the bees are having a ball.

How could I evict these flowers, narrow leaf zinnias and alyssum from this bed. This summer it held peppers so there was plenty of room for these guys to grow; now they  bed alongside Nappa hakusia, tenderheart, a small chinese cabbage from Kitazawa Seed Co. I wonder if they will form a head like the picture on the seed package?

This is not grass growing here but larkspur seedlings which have just germinated. I'm going to have quite a job thinning them out. I turned over this area this summer and maybe exposed seeds from previous years. Much as I love larkspur even I find this over the top.

In front of this is a planting of Osteospermum. The seeds came from a friends garden in California. Spring is their prime flowering time but the recent cool evenings have prompted them to put out a few flowers.

The same is true of Delospermia cooperii along the edge of the pool and enjoying the cooler temperatures of fall.

This succulent has similar foliage but has red flowers.

This succulent is also in flower at the moment. It is rather annoying to purchase  a plant with a tag that says "succulent" with no further identification. Maybe someone can identify it. It is a delightful succulent to grow in a hanging pot as the fleshy leaves are long and pencil like and then it makes these interesting flowers. When enlarged the detail on the petal is interesting.

Butterfly pea, Clitoria ternatea. might have found a better place to grow than at the bottom of the steps where it is often crushed as we walk by.

Even the cross vine is enjoying the cooler evenings. 

After the rain today I have no doubt that seedlings will be popping up all over the garden, and weeds too. Work doesn't stop during the winter in Texas.
And just to show that fall is on the way in Central Texas----