Around the Garden

There's a lot of things I've been wanting to do around the yard lately. I've been procrastinating, but I have to get myself in gear before the weather turns cold for good. I just got a couple of citrus plants from Darren and I've decided I want to keep all of them in pots, so I can protect them during any bad winter weather. I've got two planted in the yard that I may dig up and put into pots. Today I wanted to set up my composter near the vegetable garden and get it started with the leaves I need to rake up and some of my neighbors grass clippings, but it's been cold and rainy most of the day.
I had more to say, but as I am finishing this on Thanksgiving, I will just add a little about the photo in this post. I bought a tiny Butterwort in a "Death Cube" at Lowes. It was on clearance for 49 cents, so I figured I couldn't lose. Once acclimated to the outdoors, I put it in my bog with the pitcher plants, not knowing what might happen. It survived the summer and, I believe, thrived. It spread little by putting out more rosettes, but what surprised me last week was that it bloomed! I really wasn't expecting that. I don't know if it will survive our mild winter, but we'll have to see. Happy Thanksgiving.

Plant Resilience

I've started writing a couple other posts, but I don't have the brains to finish them right now, so I thought I would pad the blog with a number of short entries. I was going to write about plant resilience - about plants thriving despite the gardener ignoring them.

I got a bag of irises from someone at work back in the Spring, I think. I planted most of them and left the dregs on the ground. Earlier in the year, I thought this was some bulb that was already planted where I decided to put my garden area, but I noticed recently that it was one of the irises that I ignored for most of the year was thriving.
Last winter/spring I dug up a number of canna rhizomes I had planted in a pot. I put them there originally because of their tendency to spread. I stored them in a plastic grocery bag with the intention of getting around to planting it, but it never happened. So, they sat forgotten in the plastic bag since April, until last week when I noticed them growing out of the bag! Roots must have found a hole in the bag to grow into the ground, because I can't move them. It did get sun and a little rain, so there you go.

I had a few more examples that I don't have photos of - like the irises that I got off the curb in Summerville. I put them down in the yard, still in the plastic bag, and they rooted right there. I'll have to do something with them eventually, but for now they're fine where they are.