Not like the others
You know those picture games where they show you one image, then a second and ask you to find the ten differences between the two? Or the Sesame Street "one of these things" game? (You know: "♫ one of these things is not like the others, ♫ which one is different, do you know?... ♫ ")
I've got something like that for you today. I'll show you a series of photos, and you try and spot which one is different. Ready?
For reference, these are photos of my alliums, planted in my new spring bulb beds (which will soon become annual beds). They're pretty much past their peak, starting to form seeds, but still interesting I think.
Let's begin!
Did you spot the one that was different?
It appears that one of the Allium bulbs was a different type and bloomed white! Doesn't really bother me, as I'm just happy to have blooms here at all, and purple and white work well together.
These little beetles (feel free to browse around bugguide.net to ID them for me -- I'm not in the mood right now) sure do love the flowers!
I like surprises in the garden, don't you?
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What gardener doesn't like surprises but we need to qualify that. There are some surprises I don't like; a plant chewed down to the stalk or one cut of at the base by a cutworm. Let's hear it for nice surprises. Your white allium is one.
I agree...surprises are what make gardening interesting...and we'll always have them. Even when we think we've got everything under control, there will always be something to challenge that idea. I love some spontaneity and randomness in the garden...it makes it feel more alive, more a part of nature. That's actually one of the things I like most about starting things from seed...the chance for some natural variation makes things so much more interesting.
Yes...good surprises are...well...good.
Unlike the horned worm I found this morning chewing up my tomatoes.
I had those same little guys on my cilantro blooms. Not sure what they are, either. They must like white flowers.
All of those alliums are pretty.
This is a nice surprise and a lucky one, imo. The purple alliums are everywhere, but the white ones are hard to find, so you lucked out! I like it when an odd daff bulb gets mixed in, too.
Bad surprise this year in my garden: for the first time ever, something has eaten all my tender coneflower plants down to the ground. Maybe they're cousins of your white flower loving beetles, though the devastation happened overnight. Very bad surprise, indeed.
I vote for good surprises from now on.
LOVE surprises - especially when they work like this one :)
Sandy: deer eat my coneflowers. Deer and woodchucks are the only two pests that eat things in large quantities here. Rabbits nibble. These two EAT!
Alan, I'm wondering if it was cutworms. I've never seen them so bad as they are this year, maybe because of the warmer winter ... who knows. There's also a large army of a type of bug my neighbor calls an elm beetle, and in their immature state, they are red. I guess they are possible culprits, too.
Used to be I could blame the deer, but I finally got tired of crying over my garden and had a fence built. Had to. One neighbor feeds them, so they'd come to my house for desert. I left the meadow by the creek open for the deer to munch on.
Oops, I mean dessert ... although it was beginning to feel like a desert before we got our good rains last night and all day today. YAY!