I love surprises!


I have come across some of my favorite surprises right here, in my garden.  It is normal for me to discover a litter of feral kittens living under my deck or a long-abandoned (by some uncaring neighbor) pet bunny which has taken up residence behind a woodpile.  I’m ashamed to admit how many stray cats have made their way through my garden gate and into my heart.  I have found duck eggs left behind by mallards who stopped at our backyard pool every year for a short vacation and it is normal for a neighborhood chicken or two to call at my front door.

I sometimes think that people who don’t have a garden to visit must have horribly dull lives.

“However many years she lived, Mary always felt that ‘she should never forget that first morning when her garden began to grow’.” 


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One evening last week, we were hanging out with some friends in our outdoor kitchen, when I happened to notice this bloom on the vine behind my friend’s head.  Was I seeing things?  It had not been there earlier in the day, when I was preparing the grill area for that night’s dinner.  Then I realized it is a Moonflower, a nocturnal bloomer that opens after sunset and glows all night in the moonlight. As the sun rises, the fragrant blooms close.

The surprise?  I planted the seeds three years ago.

Yes, I knew there was a vine of some kind on the trellis, but we have so many vines in that area and around the nearby pergola that I hadn’t given this particular vine much notice.  And any thought of the lovely Moonflower had long before escaped me, when the seeds I had planted failed to germinate — or so I had thought.

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While clearing the cucumber vine from the garden, I spotted this little lizard friend at my feet.  Yes, we do have many, many lizards in our yard and garden, just like most homes in southern California.  
What was so surprising, then?  This lizard had a tail.  A long, glorious tail.
I think all the lizards in my neighborhood are Truth or Dare lizards, because none of them have tails.  They did at one time, certainly, but most have been lost due to their poor choice of recreation — “Run in that house full of cats and then try to run back out before you are caught!” —  Tell the truth, lizards, don’t risk taking the dare.  Hold on to your tails.
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All gardeners experience the joy of volunteer plants at one time or another.  I’ve had volunteer tomatoes show up in quite a few odd places; this year we had a nice, healthy one coming up between two bricks at the edge of an old garden bed.  One year, we had beets popping up all over the side yard, a month or so after the seeds we had planted were washed out of their bed during a late season rainstorm.

This year, I have volunteer cantaloupes.

The surprise?  I have never planted cantaloupes.
We first discovered the vine, growing out of the end of the middle of our three new raised beds.  We assumed it was a cucumber, as the cucumber vine had rapidly taken over the first bed, where we had trained it up a trellis.  What a lovely surprise to find two perfect cantaloupes, hidden under the leaves!  Today, I discovered a second cantaloupe vine, in the third raised bed, growing in the space still occupied by a struggling Roma tomato!
My guess is that the cantaloupes are growing from seeds that were in our compost pile, as we do eat a lot of melon from the local Farmers Market. I cannot wait to taste them!
When my garden is free to roam, so is my spirit.
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I dig a hole and plant a seed,
Cover it with dirt, and pull a weed.

Down comes the rain, and out comes the sun,

Up grows my plant,

Oh! What fun!


— Author unknown.  (I once taught preschool.)


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