It is the 15th of the month, and that means it’s Garden Blogger’s Bloom Day, when we bloggers report on what is blooming in our gardens. I’ve done a lot of garden clean-up this past week, but I left the cool season annuals that were still blooming intact. Cool season annuals do best in the cooler spring or fall weather. Think of pansies, violas and ornamental cabbages. And then there are these . . .

Above is an image of pot marigold, or Calendula officinalis. This perky annual is easy to start from seed and freely self-sows around the garden. It has edible flower petals that look cool in a salad. Calendula is a staple of the herb garden, where it is used in cosmetics and to lend blonde highlights when used as a hair rinse. I always grow some in my vegetable garden to help attract pollinators.

A few years back, I broadcast a seed packet of forget-me-nots, Myosotis oblongata ‘Azure Bluebirds,’ from Renee’s Garden. Now I’m rewarded with plentiful tiny blue blooms each spring, and a few in fall, too.

Snapdragons, Antirrhinum majus, actually prefer cool weather. When I lived in the San Francisco area, we grew them right through the winter. Here, they persist until we get a hard freeze. They have an edible flower, too. The fuzzy gold foliage in the background of this image is my asparagus patch!

This is not the best picture, but it shows a purple snapdragon  towards the right with a single blossom of Gaillardia ‘Mesa Yellow’ to the left, amid a plethora of the round seed heads. The real surprise is the white Alyssum ‘Snow Princess’ in the foreground. This Proven Winners introduction is like regular old-fashioned garden alyssum on steriods. One plant covered a two foot circle, even in my less-than-ideal clay soil, and thrived through the heat of summer as well as our early frosts. I’ll definitely be growing it again.

One last surprise – the short-lived perennial plant Scabiosa, or more pleasantly called Pincushion Flower. I cut this plant back in late summer, and it rewarded me with this cute bloom now.

There is always something interesting to look at in the garden, even on a rainy day in November. Happy Gardening!

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