Garden Mystery Solved

Last Christmas my aunt, who works in a garden shop, gave me a brown paper bag full of expired seeds, packets packaged to be sold in 2010.  Never mind that most seeds are viable for two, three, four years and more, the store couldn’t sell last year’s seeds.  Perhaps the percentage that will germinate goes down a little, but most will grow.  I was thrilled she had salvaged so many.  She gave me packets of everything from tomatoes to flowers, an interesting and wide variety.  Though I purchased some fresh seeds to get a particular variety of lettuce of cucumber or squash I wanted to try, I did not need to buy many packets this year.

The Mystery Plant in bloom

In the spring over about four months, I planted probably 200 to 300 seeds in little cells I put under lights.  I imagined I was keeping good notes on what I planted where.  I would draw a long rectangle in my journal, subdivide it like the planting tray, and jot the names of the seeds I had planted in the correct quadrant on the diagram.  I cleverly stuck a toothpick in one corner of the flat (that holds 72 or so cells) so I would know how to orient the tray to the drawing in the journal.  Pretty sharp, huh?  Some seedlings were easy to identify like broccoli, red, green, or Speckled Trout lettuce, and okra.  But discerning between five different varieties of pepper?  Three types of tomatoes?  Who was I kidding (besides myself) that I’d be able to remember it all?  Why I don’t spring for those little labels on which you write the seed type you’ve planted and then stick directly into the actual cell where you planted it, I don’t know.

Sooner or later as the seedlings grew and matured and started to bear, I figured out what they all were except for five plants that looked like nothing I had ever seen before, except that they were green with a stem and leaves.  I guessed they were flowers but what kind?  I waited and waited all summer for a blossom to appear, long June blending into longer July, opening the door to endless August, and still, no flowers.  Finally, about the second week of September, buds and pretty orange blossoms appeared.  O.K., there’s the flower, NOW, I can tell you what…well… I thought I’d be able to recognize it but I couldn’t.  At least I could match the flower with the front of the seed packet, something I’d been waiting about four months to do.  They are Torch Tithonia, also known as Mexican Sunflowers.  I remember planting them because the packet said they would attract butterflies and hummingbirds.  The five plants soon were full of blossoms, vivid orange flowers that added a festive touch to the late summer/early fall garden and gave me the satisfaction of a mystery solved.

I think next spring I’ll buy those little plant labeling stakes.

Busy attracting butterflies

About literarylee

I sling words for a living. Always have, always will. Some have been interesting and fun; most not. These days, I write the fun words early in the morning before the adults are up and make me eat my Cream of Wheat.
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