Late flowers

Just a couple of shots of the little gorgeous things growing in flowerpots on the deck as we head toward November:

This blossom appeared on a stalk that sprang up from a neglected plant in a mesclun mix I’d planted in a hanging basket. It looks like a bachelor’s button, except it’s growing on a lettuce plant. Weird….

I don’t remember planting portulaca, but it came up in one of the baskets this spring, so I let it go. It’s still blooming its heart out. I think I must have bought a basket of portulaca from Li’l Sprouts last year, and it just reseeded itself when I wasn’t paying attention. Some of the seed found its way into another pot (where a volunteer tomato is growing next to some dill and a Trail of Tears bean) and is producing crinkly white flowers. 

I like the things I plant on purpose, but it’s the freelancers that delight me most. At our old house in Belleville, it took about three years to get to the point where everything in my garden (except the tomatoes and peppers) was either a perennial or a self-seeding annual. It was an unruly collection, more like a crazy quilt than the neat patchwork I’d laid out when I started the garden, but I loved it, because spring planting meant putting out a few tomatoes and peppers and then walking through the garden, crumpling dried seed heads in my hands, and letting the seeds fall where they may.

If I didn’t move the hens back and forth every year, I think we’d have reached that point here by now.  

Emily