Firsts

The first pea sprout.

 

The first cucumber.  (Out of two…I’m having a low germination rate overall this year….very frustrating.)

 

The first nasturtium sprout.

 

The first gallardia flower…almost.  (Oh look, there’s a tiny spider on there I didn’t notice ‘til I pasted this picture into my post!)

 

The first gerbera daisy.  Who knew we’d planted such a color?  (And I think I spot another tiny visitor…)  That’s a horribly invasive nandina in the background; I almost didn’t spot this bright pink flower buried in it.

 

The first coreopsis.

 

This is my favorite first this year.  Here’s the story.  See those two big swathes of bushy greenness along the sidewalk, one of them with a bright yellow spot?

I planted coreopsis seeds there late last spring, and they didn’t do a dang thing.  For like, a month.  Then at some point when I was out weeding, I realized there was an unnatural consistency to these sprouts coming up in a suspiciously confined area.  Yes, my coreopsis had finally germinated!  The foliage was pretty, mostly filling in a bare spot where I just hadn’t gotten anything to “catch.”

But that’s all I got.  Whether it was too late in the season, or too dry, or what, I don’t know, but the plants never formed the first bud.  Now, I’d planted them as a perennial, hoping for a self-maintaining flower bed I wouldn’t have to replant every year.  Problem is, they only come back by reseeding.

No flowers, no seeds.  No perennials.

So I resigned myself to trying to figure out another solution in the spring.  I watched as fall approached winter, waiting for the the inevitable frost kill that would clear the space for something else.  There were a couple of light frosts that did no damage.  Then one or two harder ones that started killing some of the leaves.

And that was it.  Winter brushed us by, leaving me with a rather busy border of coreopsis leaves.  I kept my fingers crossed that, this year, the plants would figure out what they were supposed to do!  So you can imagine my joy when I spotted the first few buds a week or so ago.  It looks like I’ve got a lovely foliage cover for the front of my bed, completing it with a third level of greenery plus hiding the fading daffodil leaves as they brown up.

Now, I get to sit back and wait for it to be covered in flowers.  Finally, this bed looks complete!