October Flowers

Due to a combination of things I have planted, things the prior owners of my house planted, and self-seeded wildflower-weeds, there is pretty much always something flowering somewhere in my yard from March thru October. This is a huge change from my 35 years in Manhattan apartments.
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I didn't get to take any fotos of the six chrysanthemums I planted September 25th, for several days thereafter because of rain and my very late schedule. By the time I did get to it, several were past their peak. And the sun was behind them, whereas they would look better if the sun were behind me when I was taking this picture.

Some of the white spots in the foto above are just reflections of the sun from green leaves. Others are little flowers from the clematis growing all over my front yard. Considering how effusive these vines are, covering everything around, and even climbing up thru a large boxwood shrub at the corner of the driveway, they haven't produced many flowers in the front yard, certainly as against the blizzard of small blooms in the backyard.

Here, a clematis vine covers the stem and turning leaf of a lily, but produces few flowers.

The vines in the front yard were, however, still throwing up flowers a month after those in the backyard had stopped.

The vining at the handrail by my front stairs had a few flowers a month ago, and was still producing flowers a month later.

A couple of the chrysanthemums were still at peak, and this one caught the sun.

Four bucks from the Bergen Street Pathmark. Not bad, huh? There were some left a couple of days ago.

There are some mums from prior years that are doing poorly, perhaps from insufficient lite. Or perhaps I need to fertilize them.

My side yard is covered in 'weeds' that throw up dozens or hundreds of tiny flowers each. I haven't even attempted a calculation, but among all the individual flowers on all the individual plants in my side and back yards, there might be over 100,000 flowers there in early October.

Most of these are a faint purple, but some are white.

Here's a closeup of one cluster with a green bee or fly of some sort on the upper right that is so well camouflaged that it is hard to see. It had been farther over, clearly outlined by the white flowers, just before I snapped this picture, but it moved. How rude.

There's a second type of wildflower-weed that also throws up multitudinous flowers, mixed in with the others. Its flowers are much smaller than either the clematis or the other wildflowers.

I couldn't get a really clear picture of these tiny flowers, even in macro mode.

I didn't get my miniroses into the ground, and think it may be too late for them to establish themselves to survive the winter. I have to decide within days whether to risk putting them into the ground or bring them into the garden window (a bay window with a shelf for plants that I had put into my dining room when I replaced my old windows a couple of years ago).