If you could get gerardia to do this in your garden bed, or along a sidewalk, it would be lovely.
The purple gerardia, Agalina purpurea is one of the prettiest of the late summer/early fall flowers--when it's blooming. When it's not blooming, the stiff, wiry, purple-to-black plant is ugly.
	One of the small orb-weaving spiders has made a CD-sized central circle and three "spotted" support wings.
Lance-leafed loosestrife (prairie loosestrife in some books) blooms from early summer through early autumn if the rains hit right.
	The yellow compositae blooming in the fall have a particularly intense yellow. Our fall flower palette runs from the pink-purple of gerardia and the deeper purple of lance-leafed loosestrife and eryngo through a few pale and soft blues (pitcher sage) to very strong, almost harsh yellows in this, Maximilian sunflower...then sparked with the white of snow-on-the-mountain and frostweed.
When the flameleaf sumac berries start turning red, summer is over--even though it's still almost 100 degrees. On this plant, the bottom leaves are starting to turn golden yellow, and just before the leaves fall they'll be every shade of orange, scarlet, ruby and burgundy, glowing in the autumn sun. The berries are a favorite food of songbirds.
	These brilliant red berries seem to glow from within; they're more translucent than the berries of yaupon or possumhaw. I'm not sure if this vine is greenbriar or one of the other leathery-leafed vines.

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