No matter how long I garden, I seem to find something new to love every day. Okra has flowers. Squash come in so many different shapes and colors. As do
peppers. Corn will mature even if it’s lying flat on the ground (one of those, ahem, accidental discoveries). Healthy, happy water hyacinths (as opposed to the sad ones I’ve had in past years) develop upright leaves with fan-like blades.
There’s more life than plants in a garden, as well. Aphids are a different color, depending which plant they are on. Flies can eat a tomato hollow. There are at least a dozen different types of bees and wasps in my garden, and two or three species of flies. There’s a species of small fly (bee?) that loves the wild onions; there are so many of them you can hear the buzz from 20 feet away, and walking through them sounds like the Amityville Horror.
I’m fascinated by the plants that I know well. No matter how many years it happens, the morning that you get up and the sweet autumn clematis has exploded into blossom astonishes me every year. So does the vigor of a sweet potato vine, or the height of corn, or how a thunderstorm acts like fertilizer, making everything painfully green.
Even pests are fascinating-the tunnel dug by a cicada killer wasp, the jeweled ring of cucumber beetle damage on a leaf, the speed with which blight moves through the tomato patch.
Spring brings its own fascination, especially with our change of zone. Plants that were never perennial before are now coming back. Perennials whose seeds never survived the winter are reseeding now– I now have blue fescue babies. My new strawberries have pink flowers, instead of white. An onion seedhead that I forgot I had planted sprouted with dozens of tiny shoots, as did a tomatillo.
What fascinated you in the garden last year?
Last year I grew black-eye peas for the first time ever. I loved how really easy they were to grow, and how fun it was to thresh them.
I’m growing okra this year for the first time, and I can’t tell you how excited I was to see the seed sprout. I can’t wait until it starts to flower.
I am amazed at what survived the drought last year but also understanding of the things that did not. I lot watching the bees on the blooms through the year. My neighbor plants okra and shares with me. I love the flowers so I decided to plant some in the herb and flowers gardens It does so well in the heat here and will help shade other plants. It has sprouted and it doing well. I am anxious to see how other plants will do with the help of a little extra shade.