Blaze of Glory Part the Second

When we left our foliage festival, we were in the courtyard at the KC Irving Centre at Acadia University, admiring the Vaccinium. Let's have a closer look at some of those flamboyant colours, shall we? 

I wasn't over at the Gardens this weekend, but things are looking a little different, I do know that. We've had a lot of wind this past week, and a lot of leaves have blown off; and those that haven't blown off have started to bronze quite dramatically. It IS, after all, NO-vember.. 

However, the berries of Myrtle, or wild bayberry (Myrica pennsylvanica) will stay on their twigs for a long time yet, and they're really interesting to look at. I've never had any bayberry candles, but I'm told they're lovely too. I'll just enjoy the plants as they are, for the time being. I don't have that crafty gene. 

This is one of the most flamboyant plants in my fall garden: a spirea called 'Tor'. During the summer, it's just a polite, tidy shrub that flowers inconsequentially. Come autumn, however, it erupts into some of the most amazing shades. 

This sugar maple is on the street where my guitar teacher lives. It stopped me in my tracks when I saw it and of course I had to walk back to it and take its photo. Sugar maples and red maples are among my favourites, as I noted in Blaze of Glory Part the First. 

I believe the double flowered oakleaf hydrangea I showed in that same post is 'Snowflake'. I too am so tempted to try it. But one hydrangea type that does very well for me is the paniculata 'Grandiflora' types, also known as PeeGees. This one is at a local nursery and is very spectacular this year. 

This is a late-flowering shoot of 'Quick Fire' hydrangea. The rest of the shrug flowered earlier in the year--as in midsummer--but it put on a real spurt of growth on this one shoot and produced flowers, to my astonishment. This cultivar is a star in my books, almost as much as 'LImelight'. 

This is one of my lacecaps, a blue-flowered one, but right now it's the foliage that is appealing to me most of all. 

My deciduous azaleas are doing fun things right now, too. This is 'Golden Lights'. 

I should have gotten out this week to take more photos of this one, which is one of the seedling plants I got from my friends Sharon and Bill. I think this is the one I nicknamed 'Bill.'

One of my favourite perennial species is Euphorbia, and this particular variety is 'Fireglow.' Some of its shoots also put on a second flush of blooms and bracts and they've turned a fabulous rainbow of colour, too. 

i'm not sure which cornus this is, but I'm guessing Cornus alba. The rich wine foliage contrasts marvelously with the snowy white berries. It's not in my garden, but up at the Irving Centre, so I just need to contact one of the staff to get its identification. 

And this glorious plant is the arrowwood viburnum. It also isn't in my garden. Yet. Native viburums, cultivated ones...I love them all. I think they may be habit-forming, don't you?