Too infrequently do I get a chance to really study my plants and evaluate their conditions and activities. But the other day, I was fortunate enough to observe lots of new changes.
First off: my purple shamrock is flowering! When I bought this plant, all its peers at the farm were flowering, but since I like these plants for their foliage, I chose the one with the nicest, biggest foliage. Maybe this one's just a late bloomer. The flowers are pretty (though blurry--my apologies), and a lot closer to lavender than they look here.
Interestingly, all the flowers here are nestled underneath the leaves. I've never really seen a plant do that before. Usually they want their flowers as high up and visible as possible to encourage pollination. I wonder what advantage this flower placement confers to the purple shamrock.
The evening after I first saw these, I noticed that the blooms had closed up. I thought they might be one-day blooms, but I was mistaken. They just close up at night and open again the next morning.
In less joyful news, it seems that something is eating my Swiss chard. It looks a bit better now than it does in this picture, but some of these leaves look like they're really not doing too well. Do you know of any pests that really like chard? I hear they're fairly rabbit-proof (and I don't think we have rabbits around here anyway).
Also, we've had a lot of rain recently. As in, more rain than I expected to get all summer. This hasn't pleased my desert rose, but look at my sage go! It's huge, compared to when I got it! It's already started to form a woody stem, as you can see in the picture. I'm a proud mama.
The peppermint and lens flare are also enjoying the rain.
How has the weather affected your garden so far? Do you have anything that's struggling?
Next post: another exciting development.
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