Gentle Fire ...

I haven't yet devoted a post to some of our most faithful self-seeding annuals, so I thought I'd sneak a couple of shots in, just to show who has been revving up lately out front. Two of the things I love about self-seeding annuals is that for one, you always end up with some each year, and they have a tendency to wander around the garden a bit, popping up in unexpected places, as well as establishing their own stands here and there. These are just two of our more fiery ones who always come back to visit from year to year. The first is the marvelous California Poppy (Eschscholzia californica) and the second is the common 'Pot Marigold,' Calendula (Calendula officinalis).

Both of these flowers bloom primarily in the fiery range of oranges and yellows, but they also exhibit some wonderful and subtle variations in color from flower to flower. The past few years we've had some rather strange Calendula 'sports' develop in one area of the front boulder bed, and I'm anticipating seeing those again, they're just so bizarre! (If you'd like to see them, go here, and scroll down to the "Summertime Sports" post.) There's a lot to be said for annual self-seeders ... you don't have to replant them every year, they're very cost effective for gardeners like us, who want to snatch up so much when we're plant shopping that the bill can be sobering at times, and certain species are quite receptive to cross pollination that produce interesting variants (our Celosias seem to be quite susceptible to this). Of course sometimes the 'mutants' are outright ugly, but around here, they don't usually get a chance to make a return visit and head straight for the compost. It may seem cruel at first for us to practice 'unnatural selection,' but over the years we've learned our lesson about just letting things run rampant in the garden. That happened with Feverfew and Tansy, and after having had to eradicate those (which took several years), we're less prone to let the second tier contenders have their way ....