Mistakes

Has it ever happened to you that you sow one seed and an entire different plant grows out of it? I’m sure that’s happened to us all at least one. Well, to me it seems to be happening continuously. A blue-flower maniac that I am, I planned to sow cornflower when I saw its brilliant blue blooms on the cover. I had sowed them before, only to lose at least 30 seedlings to the harsh rains last year. I kept records of how soon each seedling germinated and I saw from my database that the cornflower germinated within two days!

With the guarantee that Haemanta (Dewy Season) would bring in no rains, I sowed them wasting no time. Two days rolled by and the third too. There was no sign of life in the pot other than the Zinnia that seemed to be giving it up. I waited nevertheless.

It was the fourth day that I got two seedlings.

I was excited and the seedlings did look like Cornflower, but days later, they looked like this. 

Now, that doesn’t look like a cornflower! I wondered and waited and as it grew on, I realized that it definitely doesn’t look like cornflower.

Meanwhile the gaillardias that I sowed in another pot a week after I did the cornflower grew pretty fast.

Since I didn’t get 100% germination last time, I sowed extra seeds in the pot and this time all the five seeds germinated! Due to my laziness and procrastination, I kept postponing the transplantation.

That pot was big yes, but not big enough to accommodate 5 members! One of the seedlings was picked out by mistake and the four remained in the pot and in no time, they grew too big for me to pull them out. I decided to let them be – the inseparable quadruplets!

By now I realized that the Gaillardia seedlings looked similar to the Cornflower seedlings! Could this be Gaillardia, but how can a cat give birth to a pup? Are such mistakes possible? Soon, one of the Cornflower twins decided to treat me with her first bloom

 and four days later I realized that it was after all Gaillardia!

Isn’t that strange! I wasn’t disappointed but not getting a cornflower did upset me a bit. I’d have loved to see a blue bloom. It turned out to be red blues.

The twins are Gaillardia Fanfare! 

As I was enjoying their show, the quadruplets put out quite a show of their foliage. Look at how cool they look! Don’t they look like a fern?

With the arrival of Vasanta (Spring), twins went crazy and they started giving out twin

 and triplet flowers!

(The triplets might not be obvious in the above photo, but can you make out the seed head to the right, below?)

Not inches away, the quadruplets were inspired and began giving out buds, inspired by their cousins. I was still wondering about the Twins. Where did they come from?

Meanwhile one of the fanfare quadruplets turned out to be a Burgunder-cousin (or is he a Burgunder?

 I thought Burgunder didn’t have such tubular petals or did they? Besides, the variety that I bought was supposed to contain only fanfare, not the burgunder-kind.

Now, as I was wondering about the burgunder, I one day realized that after the loss of my initial set of gaillardia seedlings, I tried them in the same pot that cornflower is in now and the hurricane showers didn’t let it germinate. Later, I sowed cornflower, thinking the rains must have wasted the gaillardia seedlings. So, the cat didn’t beget a pup after all! But where did my cornflower seeds go? Is it possible that the seeds survived that harsh attack of showers? Didn’t the showers of watery arrows pierce their hearts and slay them?

The Burgunder still remains a mystery. I love its deep wine-red color! I sure am gonna save the seeds as I’d want them in my garden again next year.

Meanwhile the Fanfare twins became pregnant 

and in a matter of days gave out seeds that were ready to be incubated in the ground back again,

but I intend to collect one from those seed heads and 

I hope the rest would delight these unknown warblers or wrens, who’re still shy to visit Plantville.