Why I Oughta...

Well, well, well.  Looks like we have a Magic Lily.  Or a Surprise Lily.  Or...what I think they call a Resurrection Lily (around here) in our backyard.  See below for the photo of a single Lily with six or seven flowers on it popping up in between our Oakleaf Hydrangeas in the south bed/border.  I don't seem to have documented this in the garden diary over the years, so I'm uncertain as to when it arrived or what it really is in terms of sport.  This post says that it is part of the amaryllis family - and I know I've grown those - but I'm not sure that I ever stuck one in the ground. But, sure enough.... *someone* planted this thing.  Either it came in with the mulch or it was planted in the beds at some point.  Kinda neat, right?  A surprise, indeed.  In fact, I'm putting this down in the [ garden surprise ] category.

We've been growing Sweet Potato Vines for the better part of ten years.  Basically ever since I started to buy and plant containers of my own, we've found a home for one of these.  Or six of them.  With their rock-bottom price (usually $0.99 a piece), I naturally grab one of these and a spike or two and check the box on the "spill" and "thrill" in the fill-spill-thrill container philosophy trio. But in all of that time, I have never had a Sweet Potato Vine flower.  Until now.  And I have not one vine flowering, but two!  In two different containers .   Here, below, you can see both of the wine barrel containers that I used on our patio and you can see that both of them have a very healthy/robust purple sweet potato vine and both are flowering! (also note how happy the Lemon Coral Sedum is, eh?) The flowers are quite striking and add some drama to the normally boring vine. From this DIYNetwork post , it turns out that the reason I...