Rogue Blossoms

That’s another thing about gardening: You make bets with Fate.

Spring Planting And A Beehive Update

A little more than a month ago I did my spring planting. I planted marigolds, zinnias, cosmos, daisies and moss roses in ground plots and a couple of containers.

Progress has been, generally, good. But not great.

The daisies haven’t sprouted at all. The moss roses have come up thinly. The ground plots of marigolds have come up thinly. The lines of cosmos have sprouted, yep, thinly.

The two containers of marigolds and zinnias are doing best of all.

I’m afraid I may have failed to thin the sprouts enough. There may be two or three too many plants in each container, but I never have the heart to pull up the little guys right after they sprout. I’m trying to help along the crowded containers by giving them extra water and plant food.

But all my carefully laid planting was beaten by a marigold plant that somehow went off on its own.

The first flower, the first blossom to bloom, in my garden this year was a marigold plant in one of my ground plots. But instead of being in the line I’d planted at the front of the plot, the plant to bloom first was a seed that somehow got tossed or washed way to the back and way to the side of the little rectangle of land. The plant to bloom first is growing by itself, deep in the shade of a rose bush, directly in harm’s way by the opening of a rain gutter’s downspout.

But the little marigold sprouted, dug in its roots, survived the shade and rushing rain water, and grew strong, fast and blossomed before any other plants in my garden.

Cool plant!

“. . . the history of evolution is that life escapes all barriers. Life breaks free. Life expands to new territories. Painfully, perhaps even dangerously. But life finds a way.”

Ian Malcolm