One way or another October always makes me happy. Bar hurricanes from that statement. The weather cools and this month marks my return to gardening. I spent Sunday morning in the garden dodging rain showers and toweling Fiona the Greyhound off every time we had to run back into the house.

There are seemingly millions of sticks scattered throughout the garden from the glancing blow of Hurricane Milton. It doesn’t seem like I have enough trees to have produced all of these sticks. They can’t really be raked up, so I have been picking them up one by one. Sisyphus would have loved it.

Some of my favorite native plants flower in the fall. The Juba Bush is one that causes jubilation as does Muhly Grass, both lending their fluffy pastel brilliance to this vase. I cut a handful of blooms and plonked them into my Ute tribe vase, swirled them around and viola!

Closer views:

The Juba Bush (Iresine diffusa) is the creamy white flower. It has a wonderful fragrance and is a good cut flower. The plant, being native, has a mind of its own and will only grow where it decides to. I leave it in the middle of pathways, etc. as I enjoy the flower. Here’s the full story from George Rogers at Treasure Coast Natives if you want to read up on Juba Bush. The peach flower is Tropical Red Salvia (Salvia coccinea) wearing fall colors; a bit of Pink Muhly Grass (Muhlenbergia capillaries)

It’s hard to see these blue flowers in the vase – ‘Sapphire Showers’ Duranta (Duranta repens); they rarely flower – so I plucked a few to enjoy in the house. The white daisies are another native, Bidens alba, I pull and cut these at will – they never go away and will happily grow with no attention whatsoever.

That’s all from my garden this Monday. I hope to be back in the garden with Sisyphus, clearing up the sticks. Follow this link to visit Cathy and see more vases in the comments – RamblingintheGarden