Lavender Ladies' Tête à Tête

Unbeknownst to these innocent lavender lovelies, there's a very strange garden member lurking in the background ... quietly preparing his dramatic entrance upon the edge of the Woodland Garden. Could it be our old friend Salad Fingers? No, probably not, (but I couldn't help sneaking that link in one more time) .... It's just our current Mystery Plant getting ready to steal all the attention, which it has already begun to do in the past week or so .... we're guessing it should only be a week or so more before it totally blows away the competition for stares ... and likely wrinkled, offended noses as well.

Though these two Alliums have finished blooming now and are currently putting on their seed pods, they were quite fetching back on May 13, 2007 when this shot was taken. These are just a couple of (pardon the phrase) garden variety Alliums we planted a couple of years ago when my sister got a deal on them and handed a few off to us to plant. But we'd been wanting to get some alliums going, so it was a fortuitous gift .... and they are very useful plants to have in the garden, especially if any of your plants are susceptible to fungal intections (for example, in wet years, Bee Balm can develop such fungal problems). Apparently, according to sources we've read, over time allium bulbs (which are of the same genus as onions in case you didn't know that particular tidbit) will grow larger and release sulfur into the soil, which is an excellent treatment for and prevention of such infections. They're also somewhat critter repellant and deer and rabbits seem to leave them alone. Besides the attraction of having members of the onion family blooming so reliably and prettily year after year does have its charm when well placed throughout the garden ... tall, single stalks finishing off with a ball composed of hundreds of tiny blooms lavender to purple star shaped flowers, the whole of which forms a nice round globe.

The effect they bring to the garden can, upon occasion, be quite dramatic ... and I'm pretty pleased with how this quick, spontaneous shot turned out, by capturing the rays of the late afternoon sun on a mid-spring day ... That there's a lurker in the background could hardly have been a concern to these two tranquil lavender ladies engaging in their late afternoon colloquy ... and now that they have faded and are completing their cycle by putting on seeds, they certainly are doing a graceful exit from the stage and ceding the interest to their nefarious neighbor ...