On Tuesday, December 3rd, I still had some annuals and perennials paying no mind to the calendar in Portland. To my delight, tender Salvia elegans (pineapple sage) was in full bloom, obviously enjoying the short days and cool nights of late fall. We often planted this salvia in our Loomis Creek Nursery borders in New York’s Hudson Valley (USDA hardiness zone 5b), but the growing season just wasn’t long enough to bring it into flower. It would taunt me by showing reddish bud color on the cusp of floral glory… and then “ZAP” our first freeze (anytime from late September to mid-October) blackened the plant. It’s a different story here in Portland. Salvia elegans has enough time to bloom rather abundantly with small vivid red, tubular flowers that attract our year-round Anna’s hummingbirds. I love to crush a leaf or two of Salvia elegans in one hand to get a hit of fruity pineapple aroma (of course, with a cup of java in the other hand) during my morning walk-about the garden this time of year. But Mother Nature ended that ritual quickly this week.

Perennial Penstemon ‘Enor’, with its glossy green foliage and medium-sized, purple tubular flowers was also a standout in the garden early this week. Sporting its second bloom after a mid-summer cutback, this penstemon seemed to be taunting the approaching cold weather.

Three days after these photos, on Friday, December 6, my hillside slope was frozen and covered with 1 inch of snow. I’d been warned about these Arctic blasts and cold East winds roaring out of the Columbia River gorge. “And so it goes”… as the American journalist Linda Ellerbee used to say.

Whoosh! My garden is now awash in winter garb. I laugh about seeing the spent flower stems of the giant pineapple lily, Eucomis pole-evansii, still standing against a background of Miscanthus sinensis ‘Morning Light’. I thought for sure they’d quickly turn to mush in sub-freezing temperature. This isn’t the kind of winter interest I used to go on about back East. It’s new, different and joyful to me. I just hope the ground doesn’t freeze too deeply that these South African bulbs are bothered for next summer’s show.