Late Bloomers

The geese are already starting to fly overhead, migrating south, and some of the flowers that only open in late autumn started blooming this week. Enjoy.

This blossom opened just this afternoon. It’s a New England Aster. The plant will have hundreds of blooms covering it for the next several weeks. Last year I found it sprouting in a bed of bee balm, brought in by bird or bunny from who knows where (from somewhere near Kris’s yard, perhaps? After all, it is a New England Aster!) and let it grow. Grow it has… right now it’s over 5 feet tall and three feet wide.

I didn’t plant this cardinal vine either – my neighbor did, and I’m so glad he did. It’s happily grown up and through our fence, intertwining with the red runner beans that I had planted on my side of the fence. It’s been blooming off and on, but it seems to have really exploded with blossoms over the last few days.

These are boltonia, my favorite fall flower. The blossoms are scarcely an inch across, but each plant, like the New England Aster, is covered with hundreds of blooms. I have several plants against a fence, and they make a beautiful four-foot high hedge bursting with tiny white flowers that remain open from late September until well after the first frost.

I was chasing a bumblebee that was right next to the fence with my camera lens, trying to get a shot of its cute little fuzzy self, and it flew over the fence onto my neighbor Dan’s sedum and… well… I just had to take a photo. Isn’t that a gorgeous flower? The bumblebees love these flowers, too – they’ve been swarming Dan’s sedums all this week.

While I was taking these photos today, a hummingbird came and visited the zinnias. I wish I had a photo to show you, but its movements were much too quick to capture with my camera. We rarely see hummingbirds, but earlier this week, when I was out in the yard, a hummingbird zoomed in, ignored the flowers and instead thoroughly inspected me, its wings a blur against the jewel-toned emerald feathers that covered it. All the time it was barely inches away from me. He was so close I couldn’t even move my camera to take a snap of it, for fear of injuring the little fellow, or frightening it away. It was, hands down, one of the most amazing things I’ve ever experienced!

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  By Kris, in New England, September 21, 2007 @ 10:42 am

  Having a Hummingbird buzz you really is quite extraordinary – I’ve had the same experience as well and it’s just overwhelmingly beautiful. We feed them all summer and have had as many as 5 of them fighting over the 2 feeders we have (and yes, they get VERY aggressive for their size). They have pretty much left our area already…until May 1st next year. Like clockwork they arrive on that date every year.

  Sedum, Autumn Joy is one of my favorites, though the marauding deer like them as well.

  Asters – such sweet flowers. They run wild all over New England, so it’s possible some sort of migrating airborne “vehicle” dropped off the seeds that started your glorious plant.

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