When is it all gonna go down?

In the lower Carolina Piedmont, the fall foliage color is seemingly painfully slow to manifest itself this year. Surprisingly, just a half-hour's drive north in the Catawba River valley, from southern Lake Wylie to the northern Lake Norman, there is much more understory and woodland-edge leaf color just 30 miles north.

Really the only color of note I've really noticed is the crusty gray-brown on begonias and mums from Monday morning's horribly-forecasted first hard frost. (Way to go, guys, you forecast 34 and EVERYONE gets down to 30 degrees).

So as I look forward to a fall leaf color peak in November, my floral interests in my rockery containers have sustained me thus far. This year I tried two fall-flowering crocus species. In the last week, they have sprouted up, and literally in 36 hours, the first bloomer went from a mere 1/2 inch tall to sending up a flower bud yesterday afternoon to opening this morning. It literally grew so fast it rivaled the stuff you would see in time-lapse video saved only for PBS nature programs or "Living Planet" documentaries.

Crocus medius is native to the wooded grasslands of southern France and adjacent Italy. Usually the only things of merit coming out of France are food, occasional art and bad attitude, but this fall-blooming small bulb is no-less-than charming and welcome. This 12" x 4" deep rockery tray (a large planter saucer) is loaded with crocus bulbs. It gets a prominent place on the patio table from now through March, when different waves of crocus come in and out of flower. With the addition of Crocus medius, the show starts in October, will continue in November with the white-blooming Crocus ochroleucus and the Tommy crocuses (Crocus tommasinianus) will speckle their purplish flowers off and on from January to March, depending how much sunlight I give the planter across the winter.

In the background of the first photo is the reliable October-flowering October daphne (Sedum sieboldii) that has been the open buffet for at least one curious carpenter bee everyday from noon to 6.

The only other floral interest is that of the Navary Red mum, but with the last of the buds now opening, it has gone from a robust red to currently having a golden orange display.

Surprisingly, no frost nipped the two coleus in the palm planter this past Monday. What I have enjoyed witnessing is how the cool nights over the past month have slowly made the younger coleus foliage deepen their salmon-orange and violet-purple hues. I'm gonna see how far into November (or December) I can get this planter to remain lush...although my daffodil bulbs are due in in mid-November. Well, if El Nino does what it usually does here in the Carolinas this winter, lots of rainy, cloudy days, but less frequent dips below freezing may allow me to overwinter it all outside, saving replanting costs next April.