Fall is not really a thing in South Florida. I like to search for seasonal signs in the garden. The weather doesn’t give clues, the heat index today was over 100 degrees Fahrenheit. My favorite local writer (sports and fishing), Ed Killer, wrote about seasons in the morning newspaper claiming the mullet run is a season in Florida. The mullet are currently running in South Florida. A link to the article https://treasurecoast-fl.newsmemory.com?publink=261ae094c_13437fc
For Florida novices, mullet is a small baitfish that heads south for the winter swimming down the Atlantic coast of Florida. It is a seasonal marker. Traveling en masse in 1 acre sized schools of fish – an acre is 220 feet by 220 feet – that’s a lot of little fish. The mullet can be seen jumping from the water in late September and fishing gets good when all the bigger fish give chase looking for a mullet meal. A season in the land without seasons.
I look for fruit on the Beautyberry, the occasional turning red leaves on Red Maple trees, fruit on the Firebush and the flowering of the Juba Bush. These are my fall favorites and they are in my vase this Monday. All South Florida natives, unlike me, and seasonal signs of fall in the garden. Maybe if we throw the whole mullet run thing in there is actual fall here.
A closer view. The orange flowers are Firebush (Hamelia patens); purple berries, Beautyberry (Calliocarpa americana); white flowers, Juba Bush (Iresine diffusa). The Blue Willow teapot is a favorite of mine, an English teapot and long ago find in a flea market…
The other side, berries and flowers on the Firebush.
Happy Monday and Happy Gardening, I hope fall sends more compelling clues in your garden. To see more seasonal vases, visit Cathy at http://www.ramblinginthgarden.wordpress.com.
And, no, I have never eaten a mullet. They are an oily fish and supposedly good smoked over citrus wood.
The Shrub Queen 
I imagine most UK gardeners are happy to have seasons – well, many of them, as not everyone enjoys their garden in winter. I am intrigued by the whole mullet run thing – fascinating! Even without a seasonal change, your vase definitely has an autumnal feel about it, a burnished look – lovely!
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Thank you, Cathy, I was in London for a couple of weeks one March years ago. The damp cold nearly did me in. There are so many mullet the fish move the water and you can watch them jumping straight up, pretty crazy.
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I think you got a fall look with your vase. We eventually get a combo fall/winter around December.
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Thank you, the fall aesthetic without actual fall. Are you bracing for rain, looking like you’ll get some.?
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There is street flooding in south Houston in all the usual spots, but not so bad where I am farther to the north.
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Good that was looking like another Harvey. We have been getting winds and beach erosion from Teddy..600 miles away!
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It is amazing. Years ago I was down at the marinas and windows were broken out of resturants from a hurricane that, I think, came into Mexico.
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The scale of the storms is amazing..
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Your vase is convincingly autumnal. And lovely.
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Thanks, Susie. Happy Monday
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Lovely ‘autumnal’ arrangement, Amy. I’m always in awe of your beauty berries. Do you feed them or is it the climate that makes them so large?
I have eaten fried mullet and chips, probably wouldn’t try them again as they were small, but flavorful. I prefer haddock myself. š
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Thanks, Eliza. These Beautyberry grow between my husbands smoker and the air conditioning condensor on sugar sand in full sun. Hardly any water and I doubt I remembered fertilizer. They are all like this in Florida, I wonder if it is due to so many pollinators, am going to ask around.
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Maybe they like heat that they don’t really get here. The other thing may be that our cold winter makes them die to the ground, so they must expend energy to regrow every year. That is probably it more than anything, I’m guessing.
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I don’t know, they were like yours in my Atlanta garden, it is a mystery…
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We also don’t have seasons in the way much of the US or Europe does either. Sometimes all that signals a change is the shortening daylight hours. We can’t claim a mullet season, though! We have a warm (some would say “hot”) season and a cool season but where that division occurs is unclear and becoming more and more so as the years pass. You surprised me with the orange flowers and the purple berries – if you’d mentioned the combination without photos I might have looked askance but it works as your photos show!
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It is interesting to see that your beautyberries ripen at the same time as they do here. The berries on the Firebush are also fascinating. Enjoy the season, whatever it offers!
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Thank you
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Red maple does well there?! It happens to be a great street tree for the Santa Clara Valley. I believe that it would do well in the inland regions of Los Angeles County, but no one believes me. I do not see the foliage in the vase.
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Red Maple is native here. I would not say they do particularly well but I do see them around. They tend to rot, in Atlanta they get borers and are very overplanted. The grafted Red Sunsets would pop off at the grafts in high winds. Not my favorite tree.
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They may be ‘marginal’. The big leaf maple is native here, and does well, but not as well as farther north where winters are cooler. They look even worse farther south, even though they are still within their native range.
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They are native to swamps here and you do see them there. In parking lots, not so pretty.
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