Garden Surprise

There are still lilies in bloom in various parts of various garden beds. Hostas are still in bloom. Clematis and roses are still happily sending out buds and flowering beautifully in a range of colours, all delighting the eye with their collective arras catching the eye with their grace and lovely presence. Astilbes are sending up their floral spires, very nicely. I've cut back bee's balm and bellflower. But shasta daisies and black-eyed Susan, and purple loosestrife and echinacea are blooming beautifully.

Turtle heads have begun their delicate bloom, and they're an absolute delight. I've discovered that the yucca that I was so certain was finished, is not, at all. Despite that in early summer I had dug it out, dead and pulpy, and replaced it with a rose. Now a yucca has located itself right beside the rose. The rose is blooming wonderfully well. Its space is not quite dislocated by the surprise presence of a new yucca. But I am amazed that the yucca managed to survive, given the fact that I had taken care to remove it, or rather what was left of it.

I quite admire the texture of Adams Needles, they're exotic, with their long tapered spears. And when they send up their huge stalk of multiple white flowers, they are quite amazing. This was an old plant, I had had it in the garden for at least fifteen years. It grew pups on occasion, and I would carefully separate the pups and place them elsewhere in the garden. The pups would grow for awhile, then fail, and finally disappear. The parent yucca often disappointed, and a summer would go by without its blooming.

One winter it had got chewed by a hungry rabbit, and the stress caused by that appeared to encourage the yucca to finally send up a wonderful flower stalk. After that it would flower every other year, in July. This spring it looked quite intact, nice and green and alert, coming through winter. I cut back a few of the lower spears that looked bedraggled and it seemed prepared to rally into summer. But it did not; it gradually wilted, its spears drying out, turning brown, and brittle.

Finally, with great regret, I had to admit my yucca had given up the ghost. Which was when I dug it out of the soil, and replaced it with the rose, now blooming lustily. Only to have the yucca mysteriously return. I am grateful for its return.