More surprises in the garden

I'm continuing the 'garden surprise' theme on this post because, well, there have been more surprises! ;-D

First off, we had a couple days of very high winds, gusts that even toppled over those 3 pots in the pic above. But the castor beans rode it out! I watched those things dance back and forth for hours, but none of them snapped. After that I did notice that the stems (actually trunks now) were starting to deform from their own weight, so I lent a little support by bungee-ing them to the fence frame behind them. (See, the frame really was a set of stakes for the castor beans after all!)

By the way - those plants (which I might mention are only 4 months old from germination!!) are now blowing past the 13 FOOT MARK!

Here's another surprise I found yesterday. I was gazing out the front bedroom window and noticed a spot of color on the Robinson crabapple I installed last Fall. (But it got re-installed early mid-June this year. Deer had nibble off all the branches heading away from the house and all the rest were heading toward it. Can't have that. So I dug it up and rotated it 180 degrees.)

It didn't seem to mind at all, although it must have gotten a little dizzy due to that spin around. Here it is - blooming away at the end of branch.

Here's a great surprise. One of the packs of gift seeds I received from a gal from the GardenWeb Winter Sowing forum was Lobelia Cardinalis (cardinal flower). I got great WS germination and have planted clumps all around the place and gave away probably just as many. The hummers LOVE the tall red flower spikes.

So the other day I was out in the Arbor garden doing some deadheading and was taken aback to see a shaft of bright BLUE in the middle of a clump of red (cardinal flowers and red salvias). Whoa!! It was a lobelia - but Lobelia Siphilitica - blue lobelia). Apparently a stray seed ended up in the wrong seed pack! And while it seems only the hummer enjoys the cardinal flowers, it's the native bees that are all over this blue beauty. :-D Hopefully it'll still have time before frost to set seed so I can germinate more next year.

And lookee here. Just a couple of days ago I posted on the Propagation Page that I did not believe the WS'd native asters would bloom this year and here they are. Well, I guess a single blossom doesn't actually constitute a 'they', but I'm seeing more buds now so soon they will be 'them' in no time. LOL








And as a followup to the previous post, here is the last apricot daylily bloom that greeted me this morning. It still just amazes me - a daylily not only reblooming, but so late in the season.

I'm beginning to believe that plants actually have personality, and seem to enjoy keeping the gardener on their toes. You just never know what's going to happen next.... LOL I'll keep an eye out and continue to keep talking to them. But the day they talk back...well...now THAT'll be some post!