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October 30, 2010. OK, so I've been taking a physical and mental break from gardening. The drought and its after-effects on the garden depressed my garden spirits so much that I preferred to be engaged in other activities (several of which have recently ramped up - I now enjoy seeing gardens pass by as I zip along on a road bike). But by now, the garden has moved on, fairly happily engaged in the things it does in Autumn after water levels were replenished by some big rainstorms. So I guess I should return my attention to horticulture as well. I'm afraid my seed collecting suffered from the inactivity, but there are still plenty of seeds to collect (and more have yet to ripen). On a walk through the garden this afternoon, it struck me how many blues I encountered. Fall is known for its fiery hues, and sure enough there were the mums, some remaining sun/coneflower types, and hot pink spikes on Bistorta 'Firetail' - but they were offset by the deep blue of Carmichael's monkshood, the clearer blues of several campanulas, a nice display of Rabdosia longituba, vibrant blue blooms on a hybrid salvia, and even some asters in the blue spectrum. And then of course there's all the seedheads. The oddball ones pictured here are from pufferfish milkweed – I've been watching them for a few weeks, as the've grown from grassy green soft-spiny balls to today's pale-green to purple elephantine contraptions. I'm not sure if I'll ever be able to successfully integrate the plant into a planting scheme, but it's certainly contributing to keeping the garden interesting in the final weeks of the garden season - before the first hard freeze shuts things down for the year.

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