Even the first frost of the year wasn’t heavy enough to knock back some of my perennials that are still blooming. My ‘Rainbow Knock Out’ rose is behaving like it’s just another summer day, not mid-November:
And my ever-impressive ‘Mercury Rising’ Coreopsis has been blooming non-stop since mid-June—that’s 5 months of flowering now!
I cut about 5 feet of height off my ‘Honeycomb’ Butterfly bush in September, but it’s grown back and is once again reaching over the roof of our house. The plant is loaded with flowers and new buds:
I think the final day of reckoning for the growing season will come later this week. It will be a roller coaster starting on Thursday and Friday with highs in the 60s(F), but then a strong storm system is supposed to arrive on Friday night and bring overnight snow showers and lots of wind. By Sunday night the forecast shows low temperatures dropping into the mid-20s. That should do it for the rest of my flowers that haven’t already started their long winter’s nap.
It’s been a rainy, weedy and very looooong growing season. I don’t usually have flowers still blooming in my yard when I receive my first winter seed catalog in the mail, but that’s what happened yesterday. And as I type this, my neighbor is mowing his lawn.
Winter ushers in calm and quiet and a much slower pace. Let those snowflakes fly!