Garden Fairies Take Stock

Garden fairies here.

We are garden fairies and we are taking stock this morning. That is why you are seeing a picture of the leaves of some rather gigantic stock, Matthioloa incana, that Carol grew from seeds she bought earlier in the spring for 11 cents a packet.

As she may or may not have noted on this blog—we are garden fairies and have no time to look it up to see if she did, hence the “may or may not”— she hedged her bets and bought two packets of stock seeds when she saw them, the variety being ‘Ten Week.’

Whew! Look at Carol, plunking down less than a quarter for some seeds! She sure is a high-stakes roller when it comes to seeds for stock.

Anyway, we are garden fairies and nearly every single seed in those two packets germinated and there were a lot of seeds. So there Carol is, LATE in the spring when stock are usually blooming, with a bunch of stock seedlings just getting going.

So she planted some out in the vegetable garden. They eventually bloomed.

Picture or it didn’t happen!

Picture! They bloomed.

Which brings us to the top picture of this post. Do scroll back up to see it, we are garden fairies, we will wait for you. We are the essence of patience and kindness that way.

Now you are asking, “What did I just see there?”

What you saw was stock plants that have been growing all summer in a vintage planter on a stand that Carol bought last year. She didn’t know what to plant in it late this spring, but with a nudge from Seedy and Soddy, which she thought was just a fly to be swatted away, she “decided” to plant some stock seedlings in it.

And there they grew.

And grew.

And grew.

But they never flowered.

Yet.

We are garden fairies and we are not going to lose hope in those stock plants. We are going to watch and wait and guard them so Carol doesn’t upend them onto the compost pile until the very last minute. They need a chance!

If they bloom yet this fall, Sweetpea MorningGlory says she’ll back a cake to celebrate. Honoria and Hortensia offered to help!

But in the meantime, while we garden fairies were taking stock of this stock and dreaming of cake, Ol’ Rainbow Tanglefly pointed to the hanging plant above it which contains Tradescantia ‘Pistachio White,’ and reminded us all that we need to get Carol to take some cuttings of that to bring inside for the winter, soon.

After all, we are garden fairies, and it is now officially fall. We know what comes next.

Winter.

There, we wrote it, and you know what they say, “What gets written, gets done.” There is no stopping winter now. It has been written!

So we garden fairies are thinking we should write and post a list of what we want Carol to do around here before the snow flies so it gets done. But while we think about this list we need to get to doing because those asters aren’t going to bloom on their own and those trees need help with fall colors, and we are garden fairies, we have a long list of our own!

Submitted by:

Viola GreenPea MayDreams, Chief Scribe and an Excellent List Maker here at May Dreams Gardens