Thursday, June 6, 2013

Secret Lupines


Growing lupines has been a challenge at the lake house gardens. At first the plants liked one bed near the shoreline. After a year or two, that fizzled. I moved them to a shadier spot and that worked, but only for a season or two. So I moved them to a woodland location and totally lost all of the plants.

Lupines can self seed and do so fairly aggressively. I thought I had scratched all of the baby plants from one bed last year. This year, a secret lupine made its way up through the chartreuse leaves of a burning bush. The bush must be acting like a mother plant, protecting the lupine, because this lupine is outdoing itself with majestic purple spikes that burst from the bush like teenagers ready to graduate.

The secret is out. The lupines are back.

Copyright 2012
Wanda Hayes Eichler

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