My zinnias went down for good over the weekend. On Friday morning I strolled through the garden and planned to cut another bouquet on Saturday; by the time I got outside on Saturday, a thorough brownout had occurred. I felt the usual wash of sadness at the fun being over for another year—sadness somewhat assuaged by the fact that the day warmed up nicely and I got to plant the very last of my spring bulbs.
Now when I go out to fill the birdfeeder each morning, there’s nothing to admire, nothing to see. Well, that’s actually not quite true. A number of my pot daisies, also known as caledula, self-seeded over the summer, and their tough, wiry flowers are still continuing to bloom. Also still gracing me with its presence is a crazy Bidens ferulifolia ‘Goldilocks Rocks,” a.k.a. beggarticks, that came from Proven Winners in the spring. The plant info says it grows 10 to 14 inches tall, but it only reached about four inches tall for me. (I’m going to guess and say the heat wiped it out, maybe?) So it didn’t make much of an impression in the garden when everything else was blooming. But now that frost has wiped out its neighbors, there it sits, a sprawling little plant with finely cut ferny foliage, dotted here and there with small daisies of the clearest, most cheerful yellow imaginable. I actually double-checked to make sure it wasn’t a perennial, it looks so good. Alas, it’s not. Sooner or later, some serious frost is going to knock my bidens’s socks off. But I’m so happy to have it, for however long it lasts!
Photo by 4028mdk09.
