American beautyberry in fruit

October ushers in my favorite season. After the endless Texas summer, cool northern breezes begin to push back the Gulf humidity by the end of October, earlier if we’re lucky. As a child, I loved October because it is my birthday month, though that isn’t as much of a thrill as it used to be.

By October the American beautyberry glows with purple fruit. It looks spectacular paired with the fuchsia blooms of ‘Duchess of Albany’ clematis, which twines around my fence beside the beautyberry. The birds will have denuded the beautyberry by January, but for now it’s lovely. And the birds deserve a treat anyway.

The cooler weather brings the garden back to life, especially the salvias, which are perking up next to the autumn-blooming fall aster and native grasses.

Fall aster, shrub daisy, and Lindheimer muhly grass form three mounds of color and texture. The aster is irresistible to small bees, which busy themselves with it all day.

I’ve paired white mistflower (also known, interestingly, as shrubby white boneset) with a Lindheimer muhly grass. Both bring texture and brightness to the early fall garden.

A close-up of the pinkish, feathery seedheads of the Lindheimer muhly

Native lantana and skeleton-leaf goldeneye daisy warm up the front garden.

Another view of this bed, with purple spires of Salvia leucantha (Mexican bush sage) visible as well

In the back garden, ‘Indigo Spires’ salvia gets a second wind as the Lindheimer muhly grass feathers out for fall.

I really like this combination of yaupon holly underplanted with inland sea oats. The berries and seedpods appear at the same time and contrast nicely. If you plant inland sea oats, be warned that they seed out aggressively. You can prevent this by cutting off the seed heads, but then what’s the point?

This little anole lizard frequently stages a lookout from the garden angel’s head. Anoles, which can change color from green to brown, can often be found sunning themselves on our porch. The males have red dewlaps—pouches of skin under their throats—which they inflate for courtship or territorial display.

Hawk moth larva

Hawk moth caterpillar on the vitex

Here is an enormous hawk moth caterpillar, which I found crawling down our vitex tree one afternoon. I’d never seen one before and couldn’t resist pulling it off the tree to identify it and photograph it. The pencil shows how large it is. According to the information I found, it was probably heading down to the leaf litter under the tree to pupate. I put it back on the tree after a few minutes, but it climbed up instead of going down, and I fretted that I had fatally disrupted its mutation process. I hope it managed to get turned around again at some point. It’s fun to watch the hawk moths dart and hover during summer twilights, when I often see them pollinating the moonflower vine.

Moonflower vine in bloom

I’ve grown moonflower vines from seed for several years from an original plant. Every winter I collect dozens of seeds, and come spring I scarify about a dozen and plant them in little pots. I usually get a 25% return on the seeds, so I end up with a couple to plant and a couple to give away. If you’ve never planted it, you simply must. The flowers, which open in the evening and close at sunrise, are enormous and deeply fragrant. Creamy white, they unfurl from long, twisted buds that remind me of candy from a confectioner’s shop. I like to plant the vine next to my porch so I can enjoy the flowers and the scent in the evening. The blossoms attract hawk moths, also known as sphinx moths, which are the size of hummingbirds. They appear in the evening and are so quick you can hardly get a good look at them.

Here is another photo of the moonflower. The blurriness is because I was trying to get my free hand in the photo for a sense of scale; these blossoms are enormous!

Butterfly’s-eye view of a purple coneflower

We recently bought a digital camera, and I’ve been experimenting with close-ups of flowers. The purple coneflowers look great, like alien pods. This must be a butterfly’s-eye view. Here’s another angle.

We’ve been lucky to have a wet and fairly cool summer, and the garden looks lush for this time of year. Here are a few more pictures from the front garden.

Coneflowers beneath vitex, and garden orbs

Guara in full bloom

The white guara looks like a congregation of butterflies fluttering in the breeze. Guara likes sun and can take heat and drought, but mine grows best with a bit of filtered shade from the vitex.

Mexican oregano in bloom, backed by ‘Indigo Spires’ salvia