Given that it is mid-November, there is a surprising amount still flowering in the garden. That thought came to me rather late last night so I wasn’t able to pop out to take a new picture to claim my folia Bloom Day badge and I had to pick a shot from the archive. My Verbena rigida isn’t looking quite that profusely flowered any more but it still has blooms at the end of each stem. Incidentally, the accompanying Euphorbia characias subsp. wulfenii is now looking much stronger and will probably be a monster to compete with the neighbouring rosemary by this time next year.

I could have made other choices, too. Looking out the this morning, I can see flowers on Centaurea (cornflower), Antirrhinum (snapdragon), Tanacetum (feverfew), Spirea and more. Some have been flowering for a long time — the cornflower, for example, has been going strong since the end of May. Of course, lots of the garden is in more typical autumnal guise with colourful leaves and stems and the intricate pattern of seedpods.

That gives a whole year’s worth of Bloom Day badges, showing that something has been in flower every month even through the hard winter we had last year.