volunteer bed

yesterday when i got home it was sunny and ninety-two degrees...today it is about forty degrees cooler and there is rain being added to may's total...it is spring at the south end of the inland sea after all...none of this stopped me from having a look around the yard and, as usual, surprise waited...the volunteer spuds in the jerusalem artichoke bed now number ten plants( fourth and fifth photos )...those came as a surprise some time ago and they are doing well...i had planted a pepper plant( sixth ) in the opposite corner of the bed and put a tomato cage around it mostly to keep track of it...when i walked over to inspect it i was a bit incredulous...however i looked again and there was a chinese yam vine securely wrapped around the cage ( seventh and eighth )...i know it's a chinese yam by the leaves ( ninth )...the astonishing thing is there hasn't been one in this bed in the last two seasons...i had assumed they had been shaded out by the jerusalem artichokes...however it would seem that radically pruning the mulberry tree to allow more light onto the bed stimulated a stray aerial bulb that had gone to ground, or a dormant root ( the can store a lot of starch and have ample energy when the conditions are ripe to grow )...so...yams it is...another trellis is in the offing...they vine aggressively and are as invasive as the sunchokes...elsewhere the cool weather will probably stall the teosinte...still the northern tepehuan ( tenth ) and the zea mays parvaglumis ( eleventh ) both have deployed third leaves...their season is taking root...over in the ramp bed some of the plants are clearly dying back ( twelfth ) at the end of their season...yet five ( so far ) have begun to grow stems ( thirteenth and fourteenth ) for blooms...five flowers would mean a lot of seeds to scatter...here's hoping it goes well...finally there are any number of ears of hard red spring wheat ( fifteenth ) emerging to join the pacific bluestem ( sixteenth ) there will be many ears...eleusis in the back yard.