autumn in the garden

Well it's definitely getting on into autumn.  We had another few days of sunny warmth with chilly nights, but as of yesterday it turned back to cold and rainy.  There aren't too many trees in Melbourne that put on an autumn show, and they tend to get a bit brown and burnt over the summer which dampens the autumn colours even further.  For example my little Japanese maple hardly has any green leaves under all the dead, burned leaves so I don't know if I'll see any colour from it this year.  But I did take a photo of the grape vine along one fence as it's now in that lovely in-between stage with shades of green, burgundy, yellow and flame.  And it should get even more stunning before the leaves fall.

I also swapped over my porch flowers, the salvia and alyssum were looking pretty tired.  As promised, Mari, I wanted to grow pansies but after looking at what they had I decided on violas instead.  In the garden shop they had big pots of both pansies and violas and the smaller violas looked a bit nicer when they were covered with flowers.  I'm really happy with the colours and I hope they put on a good show!

I also bought creeping fig to plant along the fence, but it's so cold and windy today that they'll have to wait.  Same with the onion seedlings I was going to plant out, until I heard there's hail in the forecast and decided against it.

Edit: OK I got up the courage to plant the creeping fig.  Turns out that narrow side yard is a WIND TUNNEL.  Oh my lord it was freezing.  I'm pretty sure I set a personal record for fastest planting.  No pampering, not even any watering, just into the ground (it's going to rain this week anyway).  They don't look like much at the moment but in a few years, hopefully they'll cover the wall.