Hidden Treasure

There are five, FIVE! days of school with students left. It's a bittersweet time, because I'll miss my students, but also...summer is coming. And with summer, time in the garden.

My ankle/foot is out of the boot, and I was feeling ambitious enough this weekend to do some real, heavy-duty gardening. I aggressively pruned back an invasive tree (autumn olive, sounds lovely but is a BEAST), weeded an area that had become Soil of Death, and then tilled and amended the soil with a boatload of Bumper Crop soil builder. THEN I planted things in the new, hopefully less lethal, dirt. 

There was much digging and raking and sawing and lopping and dragging things down the hill to the area where we put yard waste. In our area, teeming with invasive trees, plants, shrubs, and vines, there is a serious need for this waste pile area. I was so grateful that my new knee was performing amazingly, and my ankle was holding up, and my right knee that is headed for replacement was actually not too terrible. Until later, when every part of my body was pissed at me. 

I brought wheelbarrows of pruned branches and yanked vines down to the waste area, and I found this: 

See it? Let's zoom in...

WHAT? A crop of absolutely gorgeous and either wild or drifted from elsewhere foxgloves! Beautiful spotted beauties, among the junk. 

I have no idea where they came from. I have some foxgloves in the Birdbath Garden, the aforementioned Garden of Death, but they are a perennial version, Arctic Fox Arctic Rose: 

Not the same at all in color or shape. 

Where did these lovelies come from? And how did they end up in a very bizarre, hidden, out-of-the-way area? 

It was a moment where I was dumping detritus, and BOOM! Gorgeous hidden treasure. Something beautiful in a junky area, totally unexpected. It's a great reminder that even when things are mucky and weedy and gross, there can be good things hiding in there, too. 

Everything will fill in and get nice and bushy, and you can totally see amended soil vs crap soil. I am constantly fighting the encroaching wilds in my little garden areas. All these plants are pollinator havens, though!