The sedum flower is starting to turn pink...a sure sign summer is over.

I probably posted something about the sedums earlier in the season.  They are one of my favorite plants in the garden, and one that we’ve had the longest.  Five years ago I bought two large sedums when we first started a flower bed in the yard.  Two years ago, I moved both of the original plants to the front beds and also split them apart.  Last September, an aunt wanted to thin hers so she dug up quite a few and gave them to me.  So now we have sedums in every bed.

This particular type, also called stone crop, start growing in the Spring and eventually become a thick rubbery cabbage-looking plant.  By summer, they produce a thick fluffy flower, almost looking like broccoli or cauliflower, on the top.  This flower starts out just as green as the rest of the plant and eventually fades into white, then a pinkish hue (the color they are now), and by November they will be a deep rusty red.  So the plant actually stays in bloom for several months.  Sadly, the sun will sometime scorch the flower and turn it rusty brown early on.  One of our plants in the front yard looks like this now.

But you can almost judge the time of year just based on the hue of its flower.