Cloudy November Day at Rivergarth

 Yesterday was sunny and warm.  Now wet weather has rolled in, but it is still not very cold, no more than sweater weather.  The richly-hued leaves and berries are shiny with a fresh wash and glowing in the mist.  I couldn't resist a few pictures of the colors, although my camera was getting a little wet.

Above, no, not a pile of leaves.  Well, yea, a pile of leaves, but that's not all.  These are the hens-and-chicks that had mounded up in their growth and pushed up cylindrical flower stalks through the summer.  Their crowns died back, and now they are spreading more like a ground cover.  Very cool.  In the right of the photo, there are sharp points poking through the leaves.  That is an agave, and it doesn't like to be moist.  I need to clean out those leaves so they don't layer down in the crevices and hold moisture.

 Another pile of leaves!  Noooo, this is another sedum, which deserved a shot because of its color, but also because it is growing in that nestling-in-the-rock-grooves-looking-natural kind of way.  This garden is maturing, and I love it.  The broken pot is from mom's garden as are most of the rocks.  Thank you, Mom!

 Coup!  Yes, this is a small little bluestem, a volunteer of the larger clumps.  I now see that this phantastically-colored grass could spread even faster than anticipated when I brought it here.  Fine by me!  I adore this stuff in the autumn.  It is a signature plant.

 Named for the blue-hued blooms, plumbago, this ground cover is the absolute best.  The autumn leaves are as outrageously colored as the indigo flowers we had in late summer/early fall.  See it again below.

 All this red-leaved ground cover is plumbago that I started from a few, broken stems I dug up from Mom's garden.  This is one of two places I have it, the other being equally as large and beautiful.  When I'm dead, should someone dig this out, I will return to haunt them with bad luck by day and terrors by night!

 Aiyaiyai.  Crabapple.  Won't the winter birds love these?

 The foreground leaves are the ridiculously-rich-vari-colored crabapple, and the gold is my star magnolia.

 Here are the berries of false bamboo or nandina.  Pfft, I can photograph this bush (one of three) any time of year, and it will have something amazing to show.  It only fades for about 14 days in spring when it goes through the transformation from gaudy, winter dress to its tender, spring wardrobe.

 Here is the artichoke, which is pretty much on a volunteer basis now.  I leave the seedlings, and then they do this big, spiky, tropical looking thing.  They are biennial, so next year some of these will make flowers.  Burning bush is in the back showing off.  See below, too.

The burning bush also has these berries.  As I was wending through the garden jungle (above) to get this shot, I kept chasing sparrows back and forth.  They didn't want to leave the area, so they were circling back around me as I pushed my way inward. 

Here are the last of the zinnias.  The big kind are all done and ripened to seed, but these little ones have appreciated the rain.