Saturday, October 6, 2012

Flower Surprise

One of the side-effects of being away from the garden for a while is finding surprises when you get back. Like the fact that I planted a Canna in one of my planting-tubes:
Surprise! I think this is an orange Canna (it looks like it) but I don't remember planting it...
 I actually tried to get rid of what was growing in this tube when I replanted it with some smaller plants (now hiding under the Canna leaves). These two plants have grown in about the last month or so, and just started flowering... The leaves have a pretty color pattern also:
The leaves have green and purple streaks on them. It looks like there are two stalks growing.
 The flower is orange, and very cheerful when I see it from my kitchen window. I think it might be the cooler weather we've been having lately, as compared to the summer, that made this plant grow and flower again. I didn't do anything special to this pipe. And I pulled off most of the foliage that had been growing over the spring and summer when I replanted the pipe. If this plant had come up earlier, I probably wouldn't have done anything to it.

It was a nice surprise to find when I got back home, especially when compared to the weeds in other parts of the garden. It will be interesting to see what happens - if all the buds will actually bloom, or if the flower will shrivel up and die (like my stupid glads do every year).


And there are more buds... Hopefully the flowers will last for a while
 I guess now I'll have to rethink some of my plantings - several of the pipe plantings are getting big enough to need more room, and I had been planning to overhaul this pipe again. But I like the bright flowers, so maybe it will get to stay instead.

Tuesday, October 2, 2012

Grass Takeover!

While I was gone for a while, the grass was busy staging a takeover:

That's not supposed to be a lawn...
I got about half of it pulled out before it got dark. The plan is to finish tomorrow and Thursday, and then plant a fall/winter crop of garlic and Swiss chard. I've never grown either, so we'll see how that goes. And I found another watermelon hiding in the grass too!

With the weather cooling down somewhat, and fall getting here, I'm getting excited to get some of my plans moving again!