Here it is y’all. First ever cosmos bloom by the hands of Gardener Steve.
I woke up this morning and checked the garden as usual, although lately, as there haven’t been many developments, I haven’t been as consistent about looking in the garden. Well, this morning, I was overjoyed and delighted to see a huge, bright, yellow new flower in my garden. That is this cosmos, and this is a particularly exciting bloom because it has told me, finally, what I’ve really wanted to know. What we’ve all been wanting to know. Were these generic green, springy plants common ragweed? (Undesirable, although native.) Or were they cosmos?
Google Lens had consistently ID’ed these as common ragweed. And I couldn’t remember where I had planted cosmos seeds, so I couldn’t even know if I had planted cosmos here, and if they had any hope of being cosmos. But I was holding out hope, and I almost pulled them out of the ground, in my rage, thinking they were just useless ragweeds. I held on, just in case, and look. They really were cosmos. I can’t believe it.
I started to really have hope about a week ago, when I was walking to the record store. We (Parker and I) passed a neighbor’s yard that was loaded with cosmos, and I saw the buds at the end of the stalks, the future flowers, and I thought, those look just like the buds on my potential cosmos. That’s a good sign! They look exactly the same! But I wasn’t going to get my hopes up too much. No, I’ve been burned before….
And then, yesterday, finally a bud opened up, and it looked like it was going to be a flower, but it was restrained and drooping a bit. I think because it was fresh, and the heat was intense. I thought maybe the flower wasn’t in good health, but this morning, I stepped out and saw that flash of yellow, glorious beaming flower, perfectly healthy and radiant. Not ragweed!!!! But, cosmos??
It looks so much like Coreopsis or something around that I thought I actually had something else entirely, neither cosmos or ragweed. But the internet helped me to ID the flower, and it said, cosmos. A cosmos sulphureus, looks like, as I had gotten the seeds from a free pack at the local park and so wasn’t sure what they were exactly.
In my poor clay, sandy dry soil that turns into mud the second water touches it, these cosmos have done very well. And I see on the internet, right now, (https://www.gardenia.net/plant/cosmos-sulphureus-cosmic-yellow) “Tolerates poor soil, heat, and humidity.” Yep, that’s my yard, alright.
The zinneas have done well but needed more water. Some of them are still doing well, or at least they haven’t died, as you might be able to see in the back of the photo. And actually, I just got a new zinnea bloom, and it’s a bright, light pink. A really nice color. So, it’s true that these are beginner friendly plants, because I have no idea what I’m doing, I’ve done no soil prep, I have put down no fertilizer, and no mulch, my watering methods are surely subpar—and on the whole these plants, cosmos and zinnea, they’re doing alright. They’re making it.
I want to plant the natives. The frost aster in the back is great, I feel great about having that in the yard, a real native. I see it blooming all over now, out in the wild, in some people’s yards, and at Shelby. There’s some frost aster in the wild fields at Shelby. I feel like to have such a huge patch of it here in the yard. And there are some little bits of it here and there on the sides of the streets, in the border grass and by fences. It’s an interesting flower, so incredibly small, yet the same shape and look of the larger, popular flowers. The “classic” flower look, yet so tiny and dainty. The natives are important, but because these zinneas and cosmos have been so easy to grow, and look nice, I am definitely tempted to just go all in on them and have the entire yard just be zinnea and cosmos, next year.
I planted some smooth-blue aster and a lot of coneflower, purple coneflower and black-eyed susan, and I haven’t seen any of those sprouts come up. I wonder if they will show next spring, and need to germinate over the winter. We’ll see about that. It’s either that or they haven’t taken well to the soil at all. The marigolds, I put down many marigold seeds, and only got two plants. So they haven’t done too well, and the sunflowers did okay, I had 5 plants for 20 seeds that I planted, not great, but then they were repeatedly attacked by the local squirrel mafia. They were assaulted, and it was sad, which makes me not want to try planting them again. If they’re just going to get so brutalized… but some made it through. Actually, I should just plant a ton, and expect many to not make it. But if some do, good. The sunflowers are iconic, and provide so much for the local wildlife.
I see fritillaries and skippers on the zinneas. Some bees, but not many. But the fritillaries really seem to like the zinneas.
Now, I had written about the asiatic dayflower that popped up in the neighbor’s yard, and I read that it bloomed for only a day. It looks like this bloomed for at least two days, and I need to check on it today and see if it’s gone three days. And next to it, the marvel of Peru is blooming now too.
I finally yet one of the neighbors across the street. I was lugging my haul back from Kroger yesterday, and I waved to him, as usual. However this time, he was over near the street, and I could actually talk to him, and so we finally chatted. This neighbor has been friendly and we’ve waved to each other many times, he’s often out with his dog while I’m doing my gardening work, and he recently (several months ago) got a puppy, that was extremely tiny and cute. It’s grown up, and is still extremely tiny. He told me that she’s now full sized, and guess what? Her name is Lucy. I thought that was kind of amazing, seeing as how no one is actually named Lucy except the main character in the story I wrote, Lucy and the Mingmerang, and this little dog was named Lucy, the whole time. Well, maybe the story should be about a dog instead. Dog and alien go on great adventure together. Anyway, the neighbor, Jared, he said that he liked my wildflowers. This is another person of the neighbor who has commented on my garden, and that makes you feel good. Even though it is pretty miserable for a garden, it does at least have flowers.
Jared said, “Do you have a hose, for watering?” And I knew what he was talking about. My neighbor has the hose, we live in a duplex that looks like one house, and the hose is on his side, and I never asked him if I could use it, because I’m lazy, I guess. I should have a long time ago asked him, and he would immediately reply, “Sure, go for it!” Well, I have been making due with broken watering cans and then filling up 5 gallon buckets in the tub, and Jared has seen me doing my labor-intensive watering work, and has probably been wondering for months, “Why doesn’t this guy just use a hose?” I thought that was funny.
We talked about plants, he said that he had to bring some plants in because they’re been being attacked by the squirrel mafia. He said that’s what he calls them, the squirrel vigilante group. That’s a good name for them. They have also attacked my plants, they are rogues, and they are everywhere. It seems like we have thirty squirrels living within like 100m radius of us. We have about five squirrels that live in our small backyard alone. There are a ton of great trees around, in our yards, huge trees with holes and nuts.
I should take a picture of it, but there was something popping up in my garden, that seemed to be a wild lettuce, and was possibly edibile, according to the internet. It was growing rapidly, and I’ve been watching it, and yesterday, when I was investigating the garden, I saw that it had been munched down, clean to the bases of the leaves. The whole thing had been chomped down to the base. Someone had a wonderful salad feast on that thing! Squirrel? I wonder who done it.
Those caterpillars, the common buckeye caterpillars all went away. They must have reached critical mass and have gone off to do their metamorphosing work. It’s funny that they were truly keeping the plantain weed in check, and now that my mowers are gone, the plantain weed is bursting up, out of control. They were really keeping it down. I should look around for the chrysalises, maybe I can find one around. It always made me nervous that they were hanging out in such a high traffic region, both cars and feet around. If they tried to go across the road on their quest for a suitable place to make a chrysalis, they would not have had a good time. I hope they have found good places to go.
HAKUMUSU 