With ponds scattered about the garden, I regularly watch my step to avoid the many little frogs that leap from my path. Nearer a pond or the stream, there are splashes as I stroll the garden.

As I checked the swelling buds of ‘Marvel’ mahonia (Mahonia x media ‘Marvel’, now Berberis x hortensis, above), I noticed a creature perched near the buds at the top of the evergreen shrub. It hopped to a second leaf before I recognized the frog in this odd location. Sorry, there’s no food up here, but you’re safe from me accidentally stomping on you.

In any case, ‘Marvel’ is a few days from flowering, but a week behind other autumn flowering mahonias with blooms that often persist into January (Mahonia x media ‘Winter Sun’, above). I planted two ‘Marvel’ (to join a handful of various mahonias) a few years ago, and this will be the first significant flowering for both while flowers of other mahonias are a highlight of the garden. I have seen no seedlings from the hybrid mahonias and only a few from the leatherleaf mahonia (Mahonia bealei, reputed as invasive) in its decades in the garden.

Near the ‘Marvel’ in the lower rear garden, the dangerous looking ‘Sasaba’ osmanthus Osmanthus heterophyllus ‘Sasaba’, above) is covered in tiny, fragrant white flowers. Unfortunately, I can’t smell it (or anything else), but the blooms are welcomed at a time when flowers are fading. Other osmanthus in the garden display fewer blooms, but still, it is the sharply pointed leaf of ‘Sasaba’ that is most notable.