sending to the bottom

Garden surprises - well, I've got TONS of sprouts from the tomatoes that fell on the ground and composted themselves at the end of last season, but only TWO sprouts from my wintersown ones (2 jugs). I suppose I could just let the self-sowns grow, but they're in a most inconvenient place. I may just transplant a hunk of them and see what grows. The winter sown babies sulked and sulked over the cool weather we've had, but today they look a little better (it was 90 and humid, and they obviously loved it).

Laurel

I was so put out that my perennial sweet peas from Park's Seeds had failed to germinate a couple of years ago, that I actually got another packet free from Park's. I don't always manage to get all my winter sown containers planted out, but one day two years ago, I noticed something growing in the middle of my creeping jenny groundcover. I didn't recognize what it was, but someone here responded to a photo I posted and confirmed it was the missing sweet pea vine. Luckily, the vine was growing right where some guy wires were keeping my husband's weather station secure, and now for the second year I have lovely flowers almost completely covering the wires.

A surprise this year involves Cleome. As I enlarged our garden beds a few months ago, I hauled the excavated dirt to our back property line and built a berm. We've added many bags of very cheap fill dirt from Home Depot to the berm, and now the berm is about 4' tall and 12' long. Imagine my surprise to discover Cleome growing lustily in one part of the berm!