My Plant Family

It’s time to talk about the tiny garden on the north fence. It was created to give the Chinquapin oak more fertile ground in which to thrive. All seems to be going well. The upright rosemary is having a hard time, but most everyone else is doing fine. I have noticed something odd, however, and it has to do with the plant I like to call a Yellow Bells.

The latter is one of the longest tenured plants in the garden. Every year it grows tall, blooms in the fall, and dies back. This year, however, because it has bushy neighbors in the form of the now thriving oak, and an equally thriving sage, the Bells is growing almost straight up, and it has a strange, symmetrical appearance. From the porch it looks as though every leaf on every branch has come out at the same height along the length of each of the upright branches. It looks like a lattice. It’s an unexpected uniformity, an oddity.

I’m anxious to see if it blooms this year. We didn’t get much last year. I’m not sure it’s getting enough sun or maybe cold weather. In the end, it won’t matter much, I like the current look of the plant and blooms are just a bonus. It’s sort of like bluebonnets. The crop varies from year to year. And besides, it’s the overall look of the garden that counts, and from all appearances I have a small family of mostly happy plants.