Monday, June 14, 2010

The great butterfly weed caper...


Many years ago, in another life, I had a beautiful orange butterfly weed that had been a gift. It bloomed yearly and was one of my favorite flowers in my garden.

Last summer, I began seeing them everywhere off country roads and highways. Because it had rained a lot, there had been a delay in mowing the sides of highway and roads. Normally, there are few blooming plants roadside so last year all sorts of flowers bloomed until they were mowed away.


We went to some nurseries and everyone knew of the plant but nobody had one. They hadn't seen the orange type for years. (It is actually a tropical milkweed.) I ended up buying a different variety in pink.

THEN we spotted one on the way into an outlet mall near an abandoned building site. It was really so beautiful...blooming amidst sand and debris.

Armed for just such an occasion, we dug it up. We had a bucket and shovel in the car. We looked around hoping nobody would question what we were doing and worked fast!

It looked like it wouldn't survive our attempted "transplant"...most of it died off in the last weeks of summer. But. one spike remained green until the frost. We mourned it thinking we had killed the plant uselessly.

We passed that building lot recently and it is entirely paved over and is now parking lot.

And... WE have been REWARDED...the butterfly weed has survived and started blossoming over the weekend!



Happy Monday!

Enjoy the day!

5 comments:

Dawn said...

Yeah for the butterfly bush! They are blooming all along the roadsides here and in fields, but we don't have one either. I didn't know if they would survive being transplanted while in bloom. I'm encouraged to try now.

XUE said...

That is a very pretty weed! It is funny how some gorgeous weeds from one country would be sold as pretty flowers in another country.

Beth said...

I have one of these pretty plants that came up volunteer in my flower bed; very thoughtful of it :-)

Beth

April said...

Good thing you saved the Butterfly Bush! You would have felt terrible if you would have returned to find it paved over. Now it lives on in your garden!

Lena said...

Oh my, I'm glad you took the risk and rescued it. It's a lovely plant. I've never seen one before. Your garden is very pretty Helen.