Get your Sputnik on here. Pronounced: Miss-SHOW-ee-a. Hah, I’ve been saying it wrong all this time. It pays to do a little research–which in fairness, I do. Constantly. But with a catalog of some 34,000 plant and growing, it hard to keep an eye on everything. Of course, we are now getting terrific help from Grace of Gardening with Grace, and Evan Bean of The Practical Geek. These kids know their stuff, and plant lust is the better for it.
Michauxia is a delightful outlier: you don’t see it every day. In my case, ever. I was completely unaware of this plant until Lance Wright over at Garden Riots posted it on Facebook. He found it at Xera Plants and described it as cool and rare–or at least that’s the translation I made in my head. Get it while you can!
There’s the new baby plant below. With those dastardly violets–here when we moved in. They are everywhere, and I pull them practically every day. Curses.
When Lance recommended the plant, I didn’t need to be told twice. I ran right over to Xera and bought 3 of them. Two for me and one for Megan. I believe Megan’s bit the dust early, curtesy of Pokey the-would-be-Pittie who grew up to be a super-strong Beagle.
I love to tell Megan when she’s visiting that I hear her Pittie out back baying at the moon. Megan is a super Pit Bull ambassador, constantly advocating for this much maligned pooch. Oh, the puppy gods are having a good laugh over this one.
The stats say Michauxia campanuloides is a biennial. I could have sworn this is the selfsame plant that bloomed last year. But maybe it was the one out front that did not reappear. Though, it probably wouldn’t perform differently for me that for the rest of the plant kingdom. Verily, I’ll keep a better eye on this one. If it does decide to reseed and/or come back, next I’ll give it support. I lost one big glorious arm–just loaded with blooms.
I suppose I should get on that support-case for my first foray into tomato growing as well. I’ve been avoiding purchased cages, thinking I’ll could do something more creative. But they’re headed skyward and no alternatives yet.
Creative alternative could still happen, probably.
Cheers