The Element of Surprise

My roadside flowerbed at the very front of our yard is the most neglected of all my garden areas. You would think I would spend more time here, making sure it is weed-free and neatly trimmed since this is the one flowerbed that many people see as they drive by. But here's the problem: according to my pedometer, the lane to our house is 1/8 of a mile long. In the morning when the sun is already high in the sky by 8 AM and the air is thick with humidity, the thought of walking a quarter of a mile with my basket of gardening tools to work in the hot sun doesn't sound very appealing. I think to myself, "This evening would be a much better time to work." Of course, when evening rolls around, all too often I am too tired to do much of anything.

You can understand then why one day, as I drove out of the lane on an errand, I was so surprised to see this. A rogue lily in the middle of all my Stellas!

I have no idea what type of lily this is; it blooms much like other hemerocallis, but it is much taller than the Stellas and is a reddish brown in color. Where could it have come from? This is not a case of Beckie's DIPT ("Did I Plant This?") nor could a bird have scattered a random seed. I've finally concluded that what must have happened is that this plant was mistakenly put in a six-pack of small Stellas that my son gave me two years ago.

The more I think about it, I vaguely remember seeing this last year, but it was much smaller then and I promptly forgot about it. This year I'm going to mark its spot and transplant it to a different area.

Seeing the lily prompted me to look around my flowerbeds more carefully. Sure enough, there were other surprises awaiting me. In the main bed next to the house, I had been watching the coneflower buds for a few weeks. This one showed a lot of promise for the next Garden Bloom Day. I had never noticed before the striking way in which a coneflower develops its petals. It looks like a starburst, doesn't it?

But while these coneflowers were still in the pre-blossom stages, I was surprised again to see that the coneflowers in the roadside bed were already in full bloom. They're both the same variety and both in full sun; I wonder why the difference in bloom time?

Strolling around the shade garden, I wasn't too surprised to see these pink hydrangea blooms. As I said on my "green" post last week, I never think to add some acidic fertilizer to them until after they've started blooming. I prefer blue blooms, but frankly, I'm just glad they're blooming at all.

But here's the real surprise--a baby fern. I know this wasn't here a few days ago; it must have been hiding underneath the Japanese painted fern next to it. I had ordered some inexpensive bare-root ferns from a mail-order company last fall--the kind that look like dirt with some roots--but none of them appeared this spring. I even asked for replacements--looks like I should have been a little more patient.

Moving to the back yard, I was surprised to see the Shasta daisy, "Becky," that I had planted in a pet memorial already had one bloom. I've never had much luck with daisies before, even though they are supposed to thrive in this area, but this one looks as if it is going to do well.

As I've mentioned before, yarrow is something I don't have a problem growing. But sometimes it can be a little finicky about being transplanted. I had to thin out the area where the yarrow originally was and plopped this division in an uncultivated area in the back yard. Last week it looked as though it wasn't going to make it, but now it's covered with blooms! Maybe it will spread and choke out some of the weeds nearby.

While I was in the back yard, I looked up to see the old apple trees loaded with small green apples. We don't do anything to these trees, and last year they didn't produce much fruit. It looks like this year will be a bumper crop, however.

Other than the green beans, my small vegetable garden is doing well, too. I haven't had any luck with summer squash the last two years, but I found this yellow blossom hiding under the leaves.

Now I'm regretting not planting zucchini as well. My family, though, said they needed a break after the bumper crop I had two years ago, when we had zucchini disguised in some form at nearly every meal.

No, these are not space aliens that landed on my front porch to surprise me--they're kohlrabi. If you're not familiar with kohlrabi, they are similar in taste to turnips. Neither of those vegetables appeal to me, but my husband has asked for these every year I've had a vegetable garden. So when I saw a four-pack of kohlrabi while shopping for tomato plants, I picked them up. Husband likes to eat them raw, somewhat like an apple, but he decided after the first two he ate that they needed to get a little bigger. I pulled these two up last night and asked him, "Are these big enough??" Of course, they're like radishes--the bigger they are, the stronger the flavor. He ate part of one today to avoid any more sarcastic comments from me.

The back yard is also where the hollyhocks grow freely. These are not surprise plants at all. Some of you may remember my post about planting some passalongs from my mother this spring. What surprised me at the time were all the comments I received about these hollyhocks. They are all heirloom, single-blossom plants: the transplants originating from my grandmother's plants, and the others planted by my husband's grandfather. This year the tall ones are obviously the originals on the farm, but in time the passalongs may catch up to them.

My mother had no idea what color the ones she gave me would be, and some of those are not blooming yet. But so far all the plants are pink or dark pink, like this one that is about 7 feet tall.

There are also a few shorter ones that are a deep dark red. I'm hoping there might be a white hollyhock in the plants yet to bloom.

Little surprises like these are one of the joys of gardening. Walking around the garden each day, you never know what you might find. Of course, there can be unpleasant surprises as well. In my new-found eagerness to take some good photos of bees, I noticed some flying around my shrubs. Quickly retrieving my camera, I moved in for a closer shot. They weren't bees...

Aack!! The Japanese beetles had arrived! The innocent might look at this photo and think what beautiful insects, but the rest of us know this regal-looking iridescent body hides a destructive devil! This is the only time of year I don't envy those of you with beautiful rose gardens.

One final, and much more pleasant, surprise: last weekend a neighbor we seldom see stopped in and asked if I'd like some cherries from his trees. I picked a couple quarts and while I was pitting them, images of cherry pie kept floating through my mind. Since I never did make that strawberry pie a few weeks ago, I decided this time I would follow through. I haven't baked a pie in probably 5 years, and now I remember why--it takes so long! But the end result was worth it--it wouldn't have won a blue ribbon for appearance, but it was delicious.

I think my roadside garden might get more attention now. . . I'm going to have to visit it several times a day to walk off all the pie I've eaten!

Post Script: After reading the first few paragraphs of this last night, I thought how lazy I sound! So I stopped writing and went down to weed that flowerbed. Good thing, too: it's storming here this morning with a predicted rainfall of 3-5 inches. I hope some of this rain is reaching those of you who really need it.