It has been a pretty good fall in the Washington area. We flirted with freezing temperatures a couple of days, but now its November and none are forecast for the next week! The big Gardenia sits happily outside the basement door waiting for a cold forecast, the Cymbidiums on the deck (at my feet when I took this photograph) are budded, the big Clivia is still outside (it likes/requires some cold as do the Cymbidiums) but most everything else has made it inside. There are still some decisions as to tropical plants in mixed containers. Some years the weather would have made those decisions for me by now, but this year they're still alive November 8, and I can elect to pot them and bring them inside. I do know though, from past experience, that I will only take care of a certain number of plants overwinter and possibly it is more humane to let them die a quick death from cold than slowly dry out or succumb to spider mites or whiteflies. I don't never learn, I just learn very slowly!The orange-yellow at the base of the Red oak is Hamamelis x Diane (the fall color of this cultivar makes it, in my opinion, the best of the hybrids), a fading Cornus florida is behind it to the left, the brilliant yellow small tree in the mid-ground middle was received as Sapium koreanum, a species name I have never again encountered. I expect it is S. japonicum. Whatever it is it sure gets great fall color. And the orange/red phase is just beginning. There is a fall-blooming camellia under/behind it, and the orangish leaves on the right border of the picture are a Crape myrtle that grows next to the deck I am standing on to take the picture. Between the Sapium and the Witchhazel the green foliage is a Basjoo banana and Brugmansia 'Charles Grimaldi', the latter still squeezing out a few flowers a day this late in the year!
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