I am so pleased with my....

I don't know why this makes me so smile-y, but seeing foxglove is such a neat thing. I'd noticed it planted in pots and yards over the years, and thought it was really cool, but never had any growing at my house. Then a couple of years ago, I bought a packets of foxglove seeds and started my own. Scattered the seeds in a black plastic bedding flat, filled with good rich, homemade potting soil. The ones that sprouted got replanted into individual containers, and watered, but otherwise pretty much ignored over the winter.

I was surprised: they survived! And as a reward, put them into bigger pots and began to give them some devoted care, after months of benign neglect. And they rewarded me, by growing at a remarkable rate. I planted some out in the bed on the north side last summer: they are blooming right now. And planted some several weeks ago in that newly-invented bed across the front of the house. Those plants are getting started, not doing much where they are visible, but I am confident they are like the anecdote about the duck: paddling like hell underneath the surface.

I think Everyone should like foxglove as much as I do, so have shared pots with all both of my favorite people. I even went so far as to deliver the pots to Decatur several weeks ago, and since they didn't seem to want to jump out of the pots and plant themselves in the ground, went back over the weekend, dug holes, and planted them my-own-self. I know they will get wilt-y and be very thirsty for a while as they get over the shock of transplanting - just as the ones in front bed are doing in afternoon sun.

But I also have Great Expectations - and hope they will soon be sending up remarkable tall spikes full of neat little tubular shaped blooms, in white, purple, lavender, with strange little spots on the inside of the tube. I seem to have an affinity for spike-y flowers: love to see snap-dragons, which in recent years landscape companies around here have planted prolifically in the fall. I can't stop myself from buying packets of astilbe every time I see them in the bins in Wal-mart - even though it is too late to be planting that stuff now... I guess the more I buy, and the more I plant, the more likely I will be to have lots of it gloriously blooming in my yard.

Update: they did!!!. You can come and see them anytime. We will have a cold glass of lemonade and sit on the porch in the rockers, and admire the spikes of foxglove all a-bloom out in the flower bed, and be smile-y together.