Pleasant surprises (and a Wednesday Vignette)

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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