surprise

another busy week in the garden and a surprise to boot...when i went to campus to water on wednesday i found that the eighth asparagus plant that i had pretty much given up on had made an appearance...the top photo is our new arrival..so we have a full compliment...gardening is a pastime that requires patience...i'll need to remeber that from time to time...i was in the garden this afternoon to water and to do some mulching...i mulched the yams, the outlying jerusalem artichokes, and a couple of asparagus plants before i ran out of compost...i'll do the rest later this weekend...the third photo is the arugula which has begun to flower ( thet are small white flowers and will be difficult to find even if you enlarge the photo, but they are there) so we will be saving arugula seeds for next season soon...over in the right corner you can see the vines from one of the yams climbing the trellis...the other plant now has sprouted two more vines which are moving toward the other side of the trellis...they will meet eventually...i still find it odd that a perennial plant is putting so much energy into vining rather than roots...but the roots were ten inches long wheni planted them last fall...perhaps with that head staret they can afford it...the fourth photo is of one of the elephant garlic plants that is preparing to flower...so...more bulbs to use to expand our population come fall...hopefully i will capture a photo of the blossom...lastly we have had some attrition on the teosinte front...not unusual i suppose, but a bit disheartening...however ther are some hardy survivors upstairs and half the plants are still on the heating mat in the basement unser the growlight so we aren't out of business yet, and perhaps the surviviors ( there's actually new growth on a couple of the Zea diploperennis plants upstairs) will be tough enough to make it through a full growth cycle...that is certainly my hope...and my intenetion.