Surprise! Surprise!

It snowed again last night and today. We got about 4 inches of very heavy, wet snow but it seems to be melting already. The forecast calls for temperatures in the 50s by Wednesday so it should be gone soon.

I've been thinking about surprises in the garden lately. This photograph shows a Johnny-Jump-Up that I found blooming in the large back yard bed. Each year I find violas that have self-seeded in parts of the yard that I never expected to find them. During some years, I have been able to dig up enough of them to plant together in a pot.

In an earlier post, I mentioned finding a pansy growing in a pot. I've been keeping my eye on it and it seems to be doing well but hasn't yet flowered.

Last year I had another surprise. I've read that the new Wave petunias are quite hardy but I never expected them to self sow and rebloom in our Zone 5 area. However, last summer I found a lot of the pink Wave petunias coming up unexpectedly in the back yard bed where I currently have bulbs. Unfortunantly, I pulled some them up before I realized what they were. The ones that did survive grew and bloomed.

Saturday and Sunday, Ken and I spent about three hours digging up the invasive Obedient Plant. Again, this was another surprise. I had never grown it before and when I was able to buy some inexpensive 3 inch pots of it at English Gardens, I purchased six of them. I now know that it should be named the "Disobedient" Plant. Not only was it invasive but it was also killing off the perennials around it. After, digging up the plant and sifting through the soil, we had to dispose of the soil behind the pine tree. We didn't want to take a chance of any pieces of root surviving and reestablishing itself. Luckily, we have plenty of compost to refill the holes left behind. I'm not going to fill them in until I'm sure that we were able to get all of the plant out. I'm not only disappointed that the plant was so invasive but I also wasn't impressed by the flowers. I looked in several books and the flowers in the photographs were much more attractive than the ones that my plants had.

One of the reasons that I started this blog is so that I can remember what happens year after year in the garden. I like to try new techniques and new plants. I had another surprise last weekend. When I was cleaning out one of the perennial beds in the back yard, I saw a feathery-leaf plant growing. I didn't recognize it as one of my perennials but I thought that it looked too pretty to be a weed. Later on, I remembered that it is one of six delphiniums that I planted last spring. This is the first time that I have had these flowers and I had forgotten that I had them in the bed. I'm glad that I didn't impulsively pull it out.