Took me a while

 A dozen or more years ago, I planted some parsley in a clay pot and put it in a corner of my garden. A garnish for my meals, one I usually forget. The parsley, forgotten, grew and thrived. It re-seeded itself, year after year. When I moved here to Campbell River, going on 9 years ago, I brought the pot with me. It likes it here. The pot broke, as they do after repeated cycles of freezing and thawing, and the parsley escaped. Last year, it grew a rambunctious, waist-high forest behind my compost bin.

I haven't been paying it much attention. Sometimes I tell myself that I should be freezing some for winter seasoning, but I never really get around to it. Last year, I chased bees on the umbels one day. That's about it. Not until a couple of days ago did I actually look at those flowers.

They're tiny; that might count for an excuse.

Unopened parsley buds.

The buds are just buds. But then they start to open, and look at them!

Beginning to sprout stamens and petals.

Each little bud is a twosome; they look like pairs of tiny, traditional African drums, each one topped by a glossy lemon custard cap, and extending a snail siphon. (If that sounds like a mixed metaphor, blame the buds.)

And some open flowers: 5 white petals, 5 long stamens. And spider webs.

I cut one flower umbel and looked at it under the microscope:

One individual flower.

The centre of the flower keeps that twinned theme.

I see that I'll have to keep a close eye on these as they go about making seeds. Will they be twins?

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Hace una docena de años, sembré un poco de perejil en una maceta de barro, y lo coloqué en un rincón de mi jardín. Algo para sazonar la cena, algo que casi siempre se me olvida. Y la planta, olvidada, creció y prosperaba. Esparcía sus semillas, año tras año; cada primavera, se llenaba la maceta de nuevo. Cuando me mudé a Campbell River, ya hace casi nueve años, traje la maceta con todo y perejil. Le gusta su nuevo hogar, La maceta se rompió, como es de esperar después de tanto congelar y descongelar, y el perejil se escapó. El año pasado, formó un bosquecito entusiasta que me llegaba a la cintura, atrás de mi depósito de compost.

No le he puesto mucha atención. Crece feliz sin que yo haga nada. A veces pienso que debo estar congelando algunas hojas para usarlas en el invierno, pero me distraigo y se me olvida. El año pasado observaba las abejas que buscaban polen en las umbelas. Nada más. Fue apenas hace un par de dias que se me ocurrió mirar las florecitas.

Bueno, son muy, muy pequeñitas. Eso puede que me sirva de excusa.

Fotos:

1. Botones de perejil, sin abrir. Parecen botones "normales".
2. Pero se empiezan a abrir, ¡míralas! Cada botoncito es una pareja; parecen dos tamborcitos tradicionales Africanos. Con una tapa de amarillo brillante; parece flan de mango. Y levanta un sifón de caracol marino. (Si parece que estoy mezclando metáforos, la culpa la llevan esas flores.)
3. Unas flores abiertas. Tienen 5 pétalos, y 5 estambres.
4. Corté una umbela y la miré bajo el microscopio. Esta es una sola florecita.
5. Se ve que mantiene esa forma como de gemelos todavía en el centro de la flor.

Veo que voy a tener que seguir examinando estas flores mientras producen sus semillas. ¿Serán semillas gemelas?

Hints of spring already

This afternoon was unseasonably warm, and not even raining, so I took the chance of doing a bit of gardening, intending mostly to cut out plants that had been killed by the sudden, extreme (for here) cold spell in December. Cutting down the first one, I found new green leaves sprouting at the base. The next was better still, with flower buds forming already. And the next ...

All I had to do was clean away dead leaves and stems, and the garden is a garden again.

Hellebore bud. This one, last year, was a deep purple. It may darken as it grows.

Of the evergreen perennials, the primulas and pachysandra are already in flower; the hellebores are well on the way. The sausage vine and the bergenia which had seemed to be dying are back to normal; the salal and heather, sweet William and, of course, the London Pride, don't seem to have noticed the crazy weather. A half-dead Epimedium that I transplanted last fall seems to have been invigorated by the chill; it's better now than it ever was.

And this was completely unexpected; an Italian parsley plant that I planted as an annual, didn't protect from the cold because it was due to die anyhow, and left exposed in the coldest part of the garden, barely lost a few stems and still fills its pot, still green.

The Dutchman's breeches are poking out of the soil, and the bare twigs of the hydrangea all boast a big bud at the tip.

All this makes me happy.

A hanging pot off in a corner, where I'd planted trailing nasturtiums and lobelia, and which had housed a volunteer fringe-cup a couple of years ago, was a complete mess, a tangle of old twigs, cedar droppings, and dead, crispy stems. I cleared it all out, and found the fringe-cup coming back underneath. The usually green leaves are red, probably because of the cold.

Fuzzy stems and leaves of the fringe-cup.

A closer look at the stem. A bug would call it spiky, not merely "fuzzy".