The Weirdness Chronicles 2006 Chapter Eight
My hummingbird garden had two disappointments this year. No hummingbirds and red yarrow that turned out to be pink. It was supposed to be "Fire King Yarrow" described as "Astounding crimson and yellow blooms will light up borders, beds or foundation areas with fiery color for weeks on end." No matter. I simply transplanted it to the border along my neighbor's ugly green fence. I'm looking for bright colors that will really stand out against the dark green. I moved the yarrow plants sometime last month. I'm not exactly sure when. October is kind of a blur of activity.
Imagine my surprise, then, when I was looking over that border for a suitable spot for the peony that I had been given and saw this:
One of the yarrows is blooming. In November. After several frosts. After being transplanted. The stalk has flopped over onto the lawn, but as you can see from the picture, the flowers and the foliage are perfectly healthy.
Weird.
posted by OldRoses @ 2:24 PM
6 Comments:
Lucky you!
I think this has been a weird season all around this year. If you get to enjoy that in November...wow!
Don't give up on the hummingbirds! I noticed that I had many more hummingbirds and butterflies in my garden's second season than the first. Maybe it just takes them awhile to catch on to the new food source.
My 'Paprika' yarrow is blooming now, too! I didn't really expect flowers at all--much less right now--given that these were tiny Bluestone Perennials
plants that I put in this spring.
Aren't those yarrow descriptions deceiving, by the way? I swear that you could switch around the descriptions of 'Paprika,' 'Fire King,' 'Terracotta,' 'Cerise Queen,' 'Walter Funcke' and 2 or 3 others without anyone noticing, they sound so similar. I'm not convinced that 'Paprika' is even what I wanted color-wise, but I'm willing to give it another year to see.
Kasmira, I have no intention of giving up. In fact, I am enlarging my hummingbird garden. And merging it with a butterfly garden.
Kim, I've never grown yarrow before. Is this normal behavior and NOT weirdness?
I just read about someone who had a snowdrop turn up in their Iowa garden! I love those little last-breath-of-summer surprises. :)
I've been noticing exactly the same thing with my Cerise Queen yarrow. I transplanted some up by the barn and also near one of my hubby's rustic fences, and there are still perfectly healthy blooms on the one by the barn. The other is about done now but it bloomed for ages. And we're quite a bit further north than you! I don't remember noticing this before, so I can't really say if it's normal behavior or not.
My CQ looks to be pretty much the same color as your Fire King.
We usually have plenty of hummingbirds, but not this year. Most of them disappeared after the flood we had in June, along with most of the other birds. It was weird. I'd love to know where they went. We had a couple flitting around the gardens during the summer, but they hardly came to our 2 feeders. Most unusual!
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