Courtesy Notice: This did get a bit more rambly than planned, but I don’t have time to try to knock it down because I have a promise to keep today.
It finally opened! The other one also suddenly has a second bud forming. So I had to take some pictures. I want to point out that last year I have no photo evidence of anything like that in that bed.
Here’s what’s odd. When I look at my 2018 Plantings notes, I wrote that I planted “Black eyed susans – porch – June 8”. From pictures I’ve looked at, this is a fairly likely candidate but the “porch” designation is supposed to mean something else.
I am now wondering if I classified “porch” wrong for some of the seeds because I was back filling info on that page from memory. It is true that I planted some flower seeds in a four bay (right word?) planter which I later realized might actually not be a planter but might be a four small loaf earthenware baking pan because the color is a bit too gray and once it got doused with a serious rain, did not drain well at all. (I think we found that planter/baking pan in the cellar–because I don’t recall buying it, and there were some odds and ends down there at closing.)
However, when I thought back each time, my brain kept insisting that what I planted in there was the jump ups and butterfly flower on June 18th. Technically, I started them indoors; but then almost immediately moved the planter to the porch during the day due to lack of strong sunlight of any extended time in the kitchen windows despite the south and east facing windows due to obstructions to the east and southeast; brought it in at night; then later finally left it out on a sunny-ish spot in the backyard because I was worried about how little light it was getting on the small covered side porch. Yet I also tend to call the two long beds and shorter beds on the east/west by the front porch the “porch beds” in my head, so maybe I mixed the two meanings?
The seed packet says they can take 10-15 days to germinate. Looking at the calendar, that’s probably about right although I admit I have no idea how long after “germinate” you notice a fuzzy stalk poking through the other greenery in that bed (there is a lot on that side), however I don’t remember planting them front and back like you can see in the image. When I did the fairytale pumpkins, I did a straight row of three per side. I can understand why I might have put one or two seeds further back because they’d fill between lilies, but don’t recall doing it with any seeds this year, and the more I think about it, the more I seem to have a fuzzy memory of if I planted seeds other than the pumpkins in those beds or not. Of course it’s possible the Acorn Bombers dug one up from elsewhere and secreted it to a new treasure stash less than a foot away and nibbled the rest away.
On the other hand, last year I planted a bunch of sunflowers late and most of them never grew. I keep meaning to look into how likely it could be for any of those to somehow show up this year, but I have a feeling it’s unlikely since they didn’t grow at all last year. I think it was my transplanted daylilies coming back like Lazarus this year that put the notion in my mind since they didn’t do diddly last year. I also already made a mistaken assumption once this year about something being a possible Rip Van Winkle sunflower, so do I really need another strike on that score?
I’m also baffled because when three of all the many sunflower seeds I planted last year not only broke ground but kept growing I could have sworn I took photos, but can’t find them anywhere and now I’m thinking maybe it was one of the bad batches that came out terribly and I just deleted rather than let them stand, so can’t compare. I do know I specifically tried to plant the sunflowers closer to the porch front itself to help support them from any northern winds before I’d have to stake them (and not in a kill the undead that has risen way..sorry I’ve had Lazarus, zombie and vampire comparisons running through my brain on this matter).
So which is it? Crazy notion of sunflower in long slumber, or I mixed up “porch” meaning in my head on the Planting list? Probably the latter? The sunflower seeds I planted last year were pretty dead basic from the rack variety, and I don’t recall the centers of the ones that fought through to break ground despite their late planting last year being so warm colored. I want to say they were black from the get go–but again…no picture to be found (and honestly even the tallest was not much taller than where these are now before it keeled over).
If the one that opened doesn’t keep going vertical, it’s likely the Black-Eyed Susan and I mixed up “porch” for a sow type. I admit I have probably spent at least three hours combing through old pictures and web searching for an ID before the petals presented before unfurling today. Lesson learned.
Feel free to pitch in your two copper on what you think they are. For the record, if you find this a humorous tale of a newbie gardener, I will not take offense if you mention it.
