Snow in Fall
I’ve been doing my best to create a garden that have flowers from early spring to late fall, both day and night. It’s getting there but I don’t know when I’ll finish. I’m not going to beat myself up for it since a true garden will never be done anyway; it just evolves. I don’t remember who proclaimed that but it’s a comfort to know that someone out there has the same mentality.
Flowering plants for late spring to early summer are the easiest to find, but there are not that many choices for early spring and late fall. There are even less selections when it comes to vines. A few years ago I looked for vines or rambling roses to cover our less than attractive, chain link pool fence, hoping to give us some privacy. I found Clematis ‘Sweet Autumn’ (Clematis turniflora) in one of the catalogues and ordered two of them. One of them turned out to be something that I didn’t expect…a Clematis ‘Montana’ (Clematis montana var. rubens). This is one rare moment I don’t regret getting the wrong merchandise in the mail.
The Clematis ‘Sweet Autumn’ really lives up to its name. When it blooms it is flooded with small, lightly fragrant white flowers as soon as the temperature drops in September. We have it climbing up to the patio roof so it looks like there is snow covering that corner of the roof. It can grow to 30 feet in a season. I prune it down to the main branch every spring but it grows right back up the roof by mid summer. Here how it looks by early September…..
Petals and Wings 
Pretty hardy for such a delicate flower.
I am learning about succulents which are also beautiful year round indoors and out. That of course is easy in SW Florida’s humidity. Colorful salamanders enjoy the Hens and Chicks in particular with so many planes to explore. I get the occasional baby corn snake wrapped around a bloom stalk to cool down. Speaking of slitherin’ visitors, last evening, my 3 year old Bogie cat brought in a baby racer snake, non poisonous, from the pool cage like some trophy. It was spared as a tasty morsel and taken back out to safety. The otters in the canal were particularly playful last evening, splashing and squealing. A family lives on a low dock of an empty house down the canal.