Wait! I’m not done…

The last yellow flower on my three tall Verbascum olympicum dried up sometime around the beginning of August. Contrary to my reputation as a “neat freak” I was enjoying their brown candelabras and not yet ready to cut them down, even though the foliage was starting to die too.

Turns out there are rewards for procrastinating, as they’re blooming all over again!

Is this normal?

I know many plants will reward those who cut them back with new growth and continued blooms, but there was no cutting back here.

Some of my Echium russicum are doing the same thing, flowers emerging from the bloom spikes I left in place.

Somewhat along the same lines (but not really) there is plenty of new foliage on the Sonchus canariensis which was completely defoliated in early August.

Plants always keep you guessing don’t they?

Sometimes I feel like a phony…

I call myself a gardener, yet when something goes wrong with one of my plants I rarely know what to do. Wouldn’t a real gardener know?

The latest victim of my stupidity is my beloved Sonchus canariensis. When I bought it last summer it was a little rough around the edges…

But I took it home and cleaned it up, bought it a nice new container, and it rewarded me with lots of lush new growth.

It sailed through the winter and bloomed this spring…

But then nothing. No new growth, old growth dying.

What’s a girl to do? Should I cut back the branches and hope that new growth appears? Or? Help...