This week has had some cold days (mid-40s) and even colder nights (high 20s).  I wandered around to see what might dare to bloom in this cold and snapped these pictures:

Here is the thug hardy geranium that I mostly rooted out this year.  I’ll need to tackle them again in late winter to really finish the job.  For now, this volunteer in one of the raised veggie beds is a brave delight.

Here is a close up of the geranium’s flower.

I grew the white version of borage several years ago.  Few of them remain, but this one popped up and is courageously blooming despite the cold.

The last hardy soul I found blooming is a mullein–a flower that would easily get missed any other time of year:

The greenhouse has a couple of showy bloomers right now, starting with the plectranthus:

But the big show stopper is the masdevallia orchid:

This orchid has done extremely well for me in the cool greenhouse, but normal bloom time is spring.  It will throw occasional flowers other times of year.  I have four divisions of the original plant now and they all produce many flowers.  They are super easy to grow, too–I just keep them moist in spring/summer/fall and not so much in winter, and I feed heaviest in the spring (when I remember).  They don’t really seem to care–they just bloom and bloom!

Back to outside, here are some scenes from under the red Japanese maple in the pond garden:

Leon’s ceramic mushroom creations surrounded by the red fallen leaves.  You can see Acanthus mollis at the top of the picture.

The freshness and delicate nature of ferns really shows to great effect when surrounded by the fallen maple leaves.  I’m pretty good at figuring out which plants are which, but I need to study my ferns for sure–I have no idea which ones are which.

Another shot of my beloved Hakone grass…this time with some autumn tints adding to the show.

Lastly, some fall color from a seedling–something in the barberry/mahonia family is my guess–started from collected seeds from the wilds of an arboretum or someplace: