Again I’m baffled, not unusual in the garden where flowers occasionally appear in the wrong season. Plants perish and  mysteriously return to life. There are explanations, not always ones I understand.

Of varied volunteer positions to help fill the hours in my retirement, working with the Horticulture Department at the local high school is the most regular (and occasionally rewarding). I hope to offer some nuggets of wisdom, and occasionally I recognize a spark of interest when working with smaller groups of students.

On the Monday before Thanksgiving the class was broken into two groups, with my half working in the small nursery at the school where trees and shrubs are grown in pots that are placed within another pot sunk into the ground (Appropriately called pot in pot, very common in nurseries. This insulates the tree’s roots and helps retain moisture). Our project for the day was to add several trees and shrubs, and several holes needed to be widened to accommodate larger containers.

Quickly, I saw that several students enjoyed digging and a few were unusually skilled at swinging the mattock that was necessary to dig through roots and to remove large stones. Beside one hole to be enlarged was a blue-flowered lobelia (Lobelia siphilitica) that somehow remained fully in flower in the barren landscape this third week of November. Unfortunately it was doomed, in the way and stomped repeatedly without a thought by students dedicated to the task before it could be rescued.

I returned yesterday to inventory the nursery, just over two weeks later to find the lovely lobelia standing tall and flowering the afternoon after a nighttime freeze of seventeen degrees and repeated freezes in recent weeks. I have no explanation how this is possible.