Any one who has a gardened for any amount of time has learned, one way or another, that the gardener actually has very little control. Nature does what nature wants. We can make suggestions, but she doesn’t have to listen to us.

Let me give you an example.

Here is a picture from the catio garden in early July of 2023.

Here’s a picture of the catio garden from just this week.

Aside from the fact that everything is more or less more mature (to be expected), do you notice something else?

How about all those pink coneflowers that are in the middle? Yeah. They weren’t there in 2023. Nor were they there in 2024. (I don’t have a picture so you’ll just have to believe me.) I only had pink cone flowers in the far right corner and the near right corner.

You can see they are still there, but as you can also see, they’ve taken over a good chunk of the centre garden. And I didn’t transplant any there. They must have reseeded – quite the trick because I tend to keep the coneflowers in the catio deadheaded so they don’t attract the finches. But obviously, some seedheads escaped my notice.

And with them, came some white ones, which were also on the right side of the catio (but aren’t there anymore). I don’t mind, because they are glorious, as you can see. But they have shaded out the poor orange ones, which are of a shorter variety… I’m going to have to move them.

One other plant on the move that’s harder to notice in the pics, is the Swamp Milkweed.

I originally had a small patch on the left side. And it’s fed several of the monarch’s we had the honor to watch come into the world. But this year, it didn’t come up again. And I was quite sad about that, until I noticed several stalks coming up randomly throughout the centre garden. This is not as much of a surprise, as I let that seed fly freely – and milkweed spreads by rhizomes as well.

But it’s not just in the catio this has happened – though not with the milkweed (not yet anyway)..

In the sidewalk garden, I had a patch of little red ones, but that’s it. But as you can see… now we’ve pink and white there too!

I had pink ones on the right side of the arbour… but not the left. But I do now! And over on the left, where I used to have several clumps, including the pink, a lovely pale yelllow, and those crazy double decker coneflowers… I only have pink. Gone are the yellow and double decker ones. And I’m not sure why.

Thankfully, I still have the “green twister” which has lovely multi-coloured petals. I’m going to take some seeds from this one, just to make sure I don’t lose it next year to the pink ambition!

And just for fun… here’s some more pink in the garden!