flowers and roots

surprisingly ( to myself at least ) i find this is my 127th post of the year and the 110th since i wrote about the gamagrass "greening' on the 10th of march...today also marks my 75th trip to the garden...either after work or on the weekend...irregularly spaced ( i was there yesterday for instance and again today ) but never more than three days apart i find i have something to do from march to november...mulching...unmulching...planting...harvesting...nine months of work inter-spaced by three months of reading and planning...starting seedlings...ordering seeds, plants, and all the other stuff that goes with it...more of an investment of time over the last three years than i had imagined...i'm not complaining though...it's been an education in so many things...from the loss of plants and a mentor to the unexpected successes and the astonishment at some results...( i will never forget the first jerusalem artichoke harvest...i was stunned at the sheer number of tubers fourteen plants could produce...it shattered the whole " annuals dominate staples because they provide more calories per unit of work and /or land " hypothesis the academic portion of this garden started with and had me scrambling to find alternate explanations...found some...but that's part of the second paper along with some stuff about folk taxonomies )...all this has absolutely nothing to do with the posted photos...just a bit of reflection...it's my blog after all...the top photo is of some sunny jerusalem artichoke flowers...a member of the sunflower family it has blooms that look like what most people would term flowers..the second photo is abit of a long shot of the flowers on the hopi blue maize...grass flowers don't resemble daisies or pansies but they're flowers that serve the same purpose for all that...no flowers no kernels...no tassels no kernels...no water no kernels...maize is complex stuff...and while were talking grasses the third and fourth photos are of support roots on the larger two hopi blue plants and the last photo is of the heavy duty support roots the northern tepehuan teosinte is producing...japanese bottle grass ( or foxtail ) produces them too ( when it's young it looks like northern tepehuan teosinte too...it's a bunch grass that looks like it could be branching and the leaves resemble one another strongly too...but foxtail lacks the tinge of reddish/purple color in the stem just above the ground that tesointe[northern tepehuan or zea perennis or diploperennis] has...the only way i found to identify what's what early on )...a trait shared by many of the grass family...high summer and the production and reproduction are on..the asparagus "berries" are beginning to turn red and the first hopi blue ears should be mature in a few weeks..cowpeas and brussels sprouts next...then time to plant ramps in the back yard...lots more to do before winter but we're just about half way home.