From Traditional to Tropical: October Foliage Follow-Up

As always, visit Pam at Digging for more of this month's fun foliage posts - and to share your own!

It's a mixed bag this month for the October Foliage Follow-up!  I have everything from late season vegetables:

A golden variety of Swiss chard

To forgotten-in-the-summertime plants that reveal themselves in themselves in fall's slanting sunshine:

Glossy-leaf European ginger

Grape hyacinth foliage and the last of the coleus

'Little Zebra' dwarf miscanthus

To the hot foliage of tropicals (like this red cordyline/Ti plant) that are bright enough to put the tree leaves to shame:

Okay, I'm currently in love with this cordyline and I can't pick just one photo to share... so here are a few more:

Soon, the cordyline will have to come inside, joining the other tropicals and non-hardy succulents on a windowsill:

Mother-of-thousands, tillandias and orchids

A close-up of one of the current crop of "thousands"

The cordyline might get a few companions this winter. I have a dish of rescued tillandsias that are taking up too much valuable space on a pedestal... surely a few of them can be tucked into the cordyline branches?

The green air plants are rescues from a trashed tillandsia ball... but the fun red tillandsia is my souvenir from Naples this spring!

Speaking of my winter plans, has anyone started moving in their plants yet this fall?  If so, do you have any space-saving hints on combining and displaying them in your house?  I--I mean, a friend of mine--could always use a little help in that department... ;-)

Garden Bloggers' Bloom Day - October 2013

Most of what's blooming around here in October... was also blooming in September! I don't think that I got a good picture of my ivy geranium last month, so I decided to lead off with it this GBBD:

It's been blooming off and on all summer, in spite of my neglect and lack of feeding. The silvery foliage behind it is helichrysum (aka licorice vine) and they're both planted beneath a tree yucca of some kind. All too soon, I'm going to have to figure out what to do with all of them for the winter.

But for now, I'm enjoying the bright pop of color provided by the last of the honeysuckle vines against the blazingly blue fall skies:

The berries (above) are definitely something new.  The vine is covered with them, and it's kind of fun to see the berries and flowers coexisting.  Since the pyracantha (aka Firethorn) blooms just once in the springtime, there's no chance to see blooms and berries together on it.  But the berries come in so thickly that there wouldn't be much room for the flowers anyway:

Their orange color reminds me that my blue-pot cannas are both still going strong.  Here are a couple of nicely backlit (in the early morning light) shots of the orange one, blazing above silvery-blue 'Berggarten' sage:

Last but not least, the waxy bloom cluster of a hoya.  It started blooming outside and had to finish up its show indoors:

Pretty soon, indoor blooms are the only ones I'll get to see.  But in the meantime, I'm enjoying the last blast of fall!

For more of what's in bloom around the world, check out Carol's October Garden Bloggers Bloom Day post.