Fruits of Fall

Here are some of the 'Russian' pomegranates we harvested recently. There were only two of the bigger baseball sized fruits but there were about ten of the smaller ones. We already ate 5 or 6 of those.

The "Clubhouse" strawberries are still trickling out a few fruits. These red ones were picked October 30 and the whites November 14.

One seed from F1 Rosa palustris X 'Home Run'

Maybe not completely sterile after all... the F1 hybrid, Rosa palustris X 'Home Run' made a single hip that had a single seed inside it. I wonder if this seed is from the pollen I put on many of the flowers. It was pollen of Rosa rugosa alba.

Hawk feeding in the garden

I was watching this hawk near the garden a few days ago and wondered what it was chowing down on. It would land in the garden repeatedly and come back out to eat something that didn't look like a mouse. I couldn't imagine what it would be, so later when I was out dumping the kitchen compost I checked the barrel in that last picture. There was a pile of praying mantis legs. Aha!
It looks like most of the mantis egg cases have already been laid. And I guess since the cold will soon get them anyway, they might as well be food for the hawk.

Another try for some red in a perennial sunflower

These are the seeds I'm hoping will grow into red-eyed perennial sunflowers. They're from pollen of a red-eyed annual sunflower (Helianthus annuus) that I put on nine flowers of Jerusalem Artichoke (Helianthus tuberosus). Since there were almost eight seeds per flowerhead (and open-pollinated Jerusalem Artichoke usually has relatively few seeds here) I'm thinking I've got a good chance this time.

Hybrid Gladiolus

The first picture is from August 2009. It shows the seed I harvested from 'Boone' that resulted from using pollen (from the freezer) from Gladiolus tristis that had bloomed indoors over the preceding winter.

 

The first of the F1 seedlings to bloom opened a couple weeks ago, and I'm just getting around to posting the picture. Looks pretty much intermediate between the two parents. Sadly no fragrance at all [unlike tristis] - maybe in the next generation some of that powerful scent will come back. 

Volunteer mums

These are all volunteer seedlings that I liked enough to spare them from being sent to the compost pile. As time goes by I'm sure some of them will get replaced by new ones I like better, but for now they're making a nice show of color.

 

These last two pictures show a few honeybees that I saw working them on this brisk October day. I don't know if it was pollen or nectar that they were after, but I'm glad these mums are providing something to them. I usually see lots of flies and hoverflies but the cold must have been keeping them away today.

Reblooming F2 Viola striata X walteri

Please excuse the fingerprints on the camera lens blurring the picture - I've never claimed to be anything even remotely close to professional at photography. ;0)
This particular self-sown F2 seedling from Viola striata X walteri has relatively reliably bloomed again each Fall, much earlier than any of the other F2 seedlings. It has a strong resemblance to striata itself in having green foliage and white flowers. Note the purple-tinted foliage of the rest all around this shoot. The growth habit is a little more floppy than striata and making it NOT the most attractive of the bunch. So... if I'm going to pursue the Fall rebloom using this one it's going to take some outcrossing or backcrossing to improve the appearance.