Unless I have a very early appointment, I usually stroll through the garden every morning. My most common discoveries are uprooted plants and holes dug by raccoons, skunks or squirrels. But occasionally I have a pleasant surprise. This was one:
This is a flower on
Dermatobotrys saundersii, a plant I picked up at
The Huntington Garden's fall sale in late October. I placed the plant in a large pot in a moderately shady spot in my new bromeliad garden early this month.
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| This photo, taken November 2nd, shows what the plant looked like shortly after I potted it up |
During the last heatwave, I noticed that it'd dropped a large number of its leaves. I wasn't sure if that was a response to the heat, the sharp drop in humidity, too much shade or too little, or watering errors on my part but the leaves continued to drop and I feared I'd killed the plant. Then it began to produce flowers and show the first signs of producing new leaves. Hurrah!
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| This is what the plant looks like now. It has relatively few leaves but lots of flower buds. It turns out that the plant is semi-deciduous. I learned a lot more about it through on-line references after the flowers appeared, including that it's considered at risk of extinction, that its fruits are considered edible, but also that the USDA classifies it as poisonous. |
But those weren't the only flowers that came as a surprise. There are a few more.
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| Echeveria 'Serrana' has bloomed. I was attracted to the succulent's dark maroon foliage but its bright orange flowers are attractive too. I don't always like succulent flowers but these are definitely an exception. |
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| Some of my Eustoma grandiflorum (Lisianthus) are producing new flower buds too. In late summer and early fall, the buds of many plants withered in place. I pulled many of the plants up, tossing quite a few out, including what I thought were all of the pink-flowering varieties, which performed poorly this year. Apparently, I missed at least one. |
To top things off, as I was taking photos this morning, I ran into a visitor.
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| A Monarch butterfly! She flitted all around the 2 Arbutus 'Marina' in the back garden but I never captured a good photo with her wings open. Annoyed by my presence, she moved on to flowers higher up in the trees so I left her in peace. She's my Wednesday Vignette. |
I also left a surprise for my neighbors this morning.
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| Despite giving away bags and bags of lemons to friends over the last several weeks and dropping off a couple more at my next door neighbor's door, the tree down at the bottom of our back slope remained heavily laden with fruit, straining some of the branches. I decided to lighten its load by giving some of it away and left 2 buckets of lemons at our driveway entrance early this morning. |
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| Three-quarters of it was gone in less than an hour |
For more Wednesday Vignettes,
visit our host, Anna of Flutter & Hum.
All material © 2012-2017 by Kris Peterson for Late to the Garden Party
