The Curious Incident of......

Every year in the garden something completely random and bordering on crazy happens in the garden. This year is no exception.

A flower border around the enclosed veggie garden wasn't working. It was a breeding ground for onion grass and the flowers weren't putting up much of a fight. A bit of a David and Goliath story, but Goliath wins. My solution was to give up. I put hanging baskets of flowers along the side veggie fence instead. The marigolds and pyrethrum grow satisfactorily but lack lustrely there. Maybe next year they will strut their stuff. The weeds now compete with the grass and the lawnmower - guess who wins?

At the front patch I decided to make the garden bed bigger, top soil it and mulch it. I wanted another bed for the cottage garden and planned to put in other flowers to encourage the bees. Now, at the same time I had propogated a pretty creeping pelargonium which itself had grown from another cutting discarded outside the Evandale bakery (but that's another story).

So I planted 3 baby 'new' plants and some sunflower seedlings along the back. All good. Sat back and waited to do the initial battle with any weeds that popped up. The weeds here are notorious for their tenacity. Over night five of the six sunflowers had been all but eaten out, but one survived. I put security around the other five. The pelargoniums were left alone and looked pretty happy in their new place.

Everything kept growing nicely and quickly so the weeds didn't have much of a chance, three of the five sunflowers recovered. So far so good. But here comes the crazy part........

The pelagoniums not only grew, they looked like a completely different plant to the delicate being I propogated it from. It's what the Hulk is to Bruce Banner. Marigolds that struggled to survive before are now thick and luscious.

And the one sunflower that escaped the initial insect fest? It now stands taller than Ruprecht (over 188cm) and one leaf gives shade that rivals an umbrella. It has a gorgeous flower which I can only hope gives me seeds for next year.

I don't know what was in that top soil but it probably came from Jack's garden. It did the same thing to his beanstalk after all. I can't wait for the next Twilight Zone experience!