“Wonderful Mistake”

~ Elizabeth

Each spring I order seeds from the Burpee Seed Company and Charlie plants them in the bed he has carefully mulched and then worked up in June. I buy cosmos, sunflowers, zinnia and four o’clocks which bloom abundantly until the first freeze. The zinnia are a range of bright colors and the cosmos are pink, white and raspberry. Usually.

This year I first noticed the leaves in the foreground of the photo, unlike ones I knew. To the right of those are the feathery ones I know are the usual cosmos. I thought they might be weeds, but Charlie suggested waiting to see if they bloomed. (He later admitted he didn’t feel like pulling them out the day I spotted them.)

To my delight they turned out to be an orange cosmos the color of Icelandic poppies, a flower I have always loved. They have bloomed before their cousin cosmos, so right now they get to dazzle uninterrupted. I don’t know if some person at Burpee decided to jolt me out of my yearly routine by sending the seeds. At any rate, they are a welcome surprise. Now I just have to find the variety so I can order them next year.

22 thoughts on ““Wonderful Mistake””

    1. I cannot tell you the joy you gave Charlie by mentioning that. He said to tell you each year he has to remove a bazillion hopeful maple seeds between the bricks lest we sprout a maple forest. By the way all the bricks were salvaged on his many trips to abandoned factories around here.

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      1. Ours have stood up, but they are skinny and thin. I feel like producing a bloom takes all they have. Don’t even get me started on the snapdragons. Beyond sad.

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