September has been a beautiful month here in the Bay Area. Though we had a few days of high temps in the 80s, mostly in our little town of Los Gatos it has been pleasant and very fall-like with partly cloudy skies, cool temperatures, and chilly nights. The leaves have already started falling – this is going to go on especially with my cottonwood trees for the next 3 months! Three months of non-stop falling leaves – the garden is going to look messy for a while. I’ve started sweeping the yard every day and people just look at me perplexed – “Why do you bother?”  they are wondering.  Well, for one I get a little arm-exercise, two – I get some fresh air, and three – I just can’t stand a messy garden. So I sweep what little areas I have control over – my front balcony, kitchen patio and my courtyard. The rest of the garden is just too big to bother.  On the plus side, flowers are still blooming and looking beautiful as ever.

I am always amazed how every fall the color of rose blooms are so much more intense – just spectacular!!  Roses are still blooming but i think this may be their last flush for the season – so I just cut a bunch of blooms and made the last few garden rose bouquets for the year.

Begonias are still going strong, despite that the leaves are slowly turning yellow signifying that they are going to go dormant in a month or two, but in the meantime I am enjoying every glorious bloom.

Mums, what can I say?  I just absolutely love them. We are so fortunate in our area that mums grow all year long and bloom all year long too. There is something special about mums in the fall though – they just belong in this season – you know what I mean? I do have mums that behave as perennials and bloom in summer and in fall, but I still like to buy new mums every fall to brighten up my in-door and patio fall-decor.

Dahlias are still pumping out blooms despite the cooler temperatures.  The plants themselves are looking rather sad however the blooms – oh my goodness!!  They are gorgeous!!  I cut loads of dahlia blooms to my hearts content and made bouquets to enjoy indoors because I know its just a matter of couple of weeks before the plants will be exhausted and stop blooming.

Other perennials and such loving our spring-like fall temperatures are impatiens, fuchsias, geraniums, cyclamen, and succulents such as Autumn Joy that is in full bloom right now in Autumn no less!

Impatiens:

Geraniums

Cyclamen

Picked the last of our summer veggies.

Fall is a great time to start a few cuttings of my favorite roses, geraniums, pelargonium, mint and succulents.

Hope you had a stupendous September.

Looking forward to an outstanding October!