The Saturday morning greyhound tour featured a refreshing breeze from the ocean. Visions of cooler weather danced in my head. The fall flowers are coming into season. In South Florida a gardener has to seek fall color and use their imagination.
To tour more SOS gardens, visit Jim at gardenruminations.co.uk
Lemon Blanchetiana Bromeliad (Aechmea blanchetiana) flowers are not something one normally associates with fall color. In my garden they are. Standing about four feet tall and flowering for months starting in late summer with toasty orange and rusty colors, it is a bold statement.
I had just been thinking about how marvelous the Desert Rose (Adenium obesum) looks…when I noticed the evil oleander caterpillar lurking in the foliage. This time of year they show up and eat all the foliage. I may throw them off, or not, they make an interesting black polka dotted moth.
Fruit hanging over the fence from my neighbor’s Areca Palm (Dypsis lutescens). To me, Arecas are the trash plant of South Florida. Overused and jam packed as screening plants, they often develop fungus problems and die en masse. Not pretty, though I like the fruit.
The old reliable. A sunny South Florida native, the Beach Sunflower (Heliathus debilis). These smile through everything.
I have been enjoying the color mix of the succulent containers. Gardeners around here gift succulent cuttings, I don’t think I bought any of these. To the best of my knowledge, I have Flapjack Kalanchoes, grey Graptosedums, Green Haworthia, Jelly Bean Sedum, and Fish hook Senecio. I let the Purple Queen ramble through for a shot of color.
The intrepid Tropical Red Salvia (Salvia coccinea) in pink and red, peering through ‘Java White’ Copperleaf (Acalypha wilkesiana ‘Java White’)
That’s it for this Saturday. I will be seeking cool breezes and fall color a while longer.
The Shrub Queen 
And lovely shrubs they are 🙂
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Oh my gosh ❗️ I just noticed the bug in #2 shot 🙂
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They look scary but don’t bite.
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Lovely colours in your plants
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I love all the names of the succulents and they are so pretty too.
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Thanks, Rosie. I enjoy the succulents, the are slowly migrating into the garden.
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I like the idea of a greyhound tour…when we had labs I’d twice daily take them on their four acre walk around the perimetre of the property…it was a great way to keep rabbits at bay!
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LOL, the rabbits here frustrate the greyhound, building nests inside her fence. It is comical.
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The fruits of the areca palm are pretty: are they edible?
Beautiful set of succulents. Don’t you have 2 varieties of Haworthia? It looks like there’s one darker green than the other, but maybe that is because of the photo
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Hi Fred. I am told Areca berries are edible but not tasty, haven’t tried one. A lot of tropical fruit is weird to me. I think those are Zebra Haworthia, the color difference is from the sun.
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If I remember correctly, areca palm was a common houseplant that was inexpensive from Home Depot during the 1990s. I thought they were pretty, but Brent already considered them to be cheap, even back then. That was because he knew what they were, and that they should not be grown as dense thickets of seedlings like that. Not many of the lasted long, since they were too crowded. Those that did survive did so by killing off their competition until only two or three survived. By then, they were so yellow that most got discarded anyway. Even in Los Angeles, where they can grow quite tall, they always seem to be quite yellowish, like the color of golden bamboo.
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Some great colour, and so early in the season too. The purple trailing succulent is really pretty.
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Subtle seasonal changes here. The Red Maples leaves have turned, which I find strangely early, but typical.
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I like the idea of autumn-coloured plants that don’t then spontaneously lose their leaves! Love the gifted succulent collection. I have an orchid collection acquired in the same way 🙂
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There is an advantage to a nearly evergreen environment. Though it can get boring.
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