Ghost pumpkins? Mummy pumpkins? On the other hand, maybe this design evokes a pop-culch meme I don’t know.

Red, red, red gerberas. With raindrops.

One more color!…because even with winter coming on, some plants remain green green green.

I especially like the pecan eyeballs on the right pumpkin. Aren’t pumpkins interesting when their essential orange-ness is removed?

There used to be what looked from the outside to be a perfectly fine brick house here. I used to admire the flowers and flowering shrubs in the front yard; it was all flower garden, with no grass. Lovely. When I came by last winter/spring and the shrubs were gone, with pits left where they had been, and scrabbly spots were I assumed someone had dug up bulbs and other plants, I thought, uh-oh, did someone die, or just leave, or what? Now I know. It’s a total replacement situation.

Here’s kudzu, pronounced something like kood-zoo. It’s a tenacious species, and even trying to persist here as the temperatures drop with winter coming. In full winter, it may lose its leaves, and will bounce back when the weather warms. I read somewhere that its roots can go thirty feet along under blacktop and thereby the plant can cross a paved road. Persistent.

Continuing the growth theme, here’re some brilliant-colored new fronds on an evergreen. Even in the overcast of an almost-rainy moment, they almost glow, the color is so vivid.

Title is a nod to Nobel economist Paul Krugman, who sometimes notes the wonkish level of his NYTimes columns.

Winter roses, so decorative. Or merely autumnal?

There’s evidence of a project gone awry. That vine has been twining for months to get that high! Or was the ladder placed for the vine and not for a chore?

Am I wrong? Do these not look like flounces?

I have never grown dahlias, and I do like them. They remind me of oversized starflowers (aka star flowers).

My conclusion when I saw this was that inflatable beasties can be afflicted with Seasonal Affective Disorder.

I didn’t intend an orange/pink color theme, but lookee there!

Title refers not so much to geography as photo subject matter.

We sprang for a mechanical carwash over at the BP to reduce the grime accumulated yesterday on the Explorer. It was reduced, but not vanquished. Now, for better or worse, we don’t look like we’ve been out in our hunting camp.

I looked in the bird book, and still I don’t know what kind of waterfowl these are. My guess, from a place of extreme ignorance, is goldeneye or lesser scaup. I’m probably looking in totally the wrong section of the ID book, however.

I assume arachnid (eight legs). You can assume I was totally surprised when I looked at the photo as when I was taking it I was trying to get a good focus on the lichen, and totally missed noticing the critter.

I looked up the lichen, too, and I’m in over my head there, yet again. Maybe an eastern candlewax or a greenshield?

Way at the end of this breakwater(?) is a navigation light. [Squint. And use your imagination?]

From what I have read these white pines were logged in the 1830s and 1840s—a darned long time ago. After the trees were cut and the logs removed, the remaining slash dried and burned, often with very hot fires leaving the already nutrient-poor sandy soils even more nutrient poor. Even today: rotting stumps and no forest.

I usually think of this dayflower as having three blue petals, then have to remind myself that truly it only has two. Still: great color.

The pointy leaved marigolds, like this, are Tagetes species, and more common here in the former colony; in the European world, I believe Calendula types are more common.

If you aren’t a plant person, my apologies; I’m avoiding current events in general, and other unpleasant news.

Okra grows like a hot, hot pepper—it points up!

Our yard’s too shady for full-sun veggies. Darn. So no okra. HowEVER, that means AC/electricity costs are lower.

Yesterday I marveled at these air roots (the skinny verticals, not the spikey foliage). “Air roots” seems like a contradictory phrase; instead, their functionality illustrates the creative evolutionary solutions that plants can develop.