I love the way my gardenias keep layering new plants all by themselves.

I picked 6 cucumbers from a volunteer that I discovered last week near my square foot gardens. N-i-i-i-c-e this time of the year!

What a fun post! After I removed a couple of Purple Fountain grasses that were WAY too tall, my Gaura's are no longer in shade and finally blooming.

I've got some daylily varieties and Black Magic Elephant Ear that I thought the drought killed which are just sprouting back this week. I knew the daylilies would possibly come back but I thought that EE was toast.

Also grew my own Halloween Pumpkin for this year quite by accident after tilling last year's rotting Halloween Pumpkin into the vegetable garden lol. Only one grew to a decent size considering the lack of moisture but it's about the size I would have bought in the store anyway and can be carved.

This was a good topic for a thread!

Danielle J.

Ooh! I have another one. I looked out the window today and saw something blooming in the back 40. I took out my binoculars, and saw a red Spider Lily in bloom! And another in bud. I had thought that after a year or two of not blooming, that I had lost them! Yeah!

My clematis that I thought died in the drought is coming back....

Hosta Guacamole just started to bloom!
It has been the strangest gardening year - full of surprises.

My Crape Myrtle's are still blooming. What a surprise :)

One of my C.sasanquas has started blooming early.

One of gardenia's out of three is blooming again. That was a wonderful surprise.

My Georgia Savory (Clinopodium georgianum) has just burst into bloom. A real sleeper all year until now. What a welcome sight (and nice to pinch off a piece and smell it). Poor little guy didn't get any supplemental watering all year and still he manages to outshine all his neighbors.

I bought a seed mat for $5.00 from my daughter's school fundraiser. I cleared a little area and set it out, and then as this year I've been so super-busy I never got around to watering it and tending it in the spring and of course it never rained, so I just thought it was $5.00 wasted.

Well, out of that sad neglected little square have grown a couple of zinnia plants that have truly been making one bloom after another - it grew into a 3' square patch of the sweetest zinnias that have been making flowers for MONTHS with no care from me whatsoever.

EVERYONE should have zinnias and I shall make it a point to always get some!!

Rose

Thanks for all the interesting responses. I'm afraid my newest surprise was not all that much fun. My neighbor called me at 8:30 this morning to tell me that three deer were in my new garden in which I have worked my b____ off, digging in dry clay, carrying buckets of gray water, etc. Luckily, I scared them away before they did too much damage.Now a good shower would be the best surprise of all. Peggy

Three native dogwoods sprung up behind my old garden shed a few years ago. Today they are all loaded with flower buds for the first time!