The Freebies Flourishing Near the Back

The potato corner of the garden has been a surprise and a wonder. Occupying the five northwestern most rows, they include a like number of varieties -- "Yukon Gold," "Yukon Gem," "German Butterball," "Red Thumb," plus some unlabeled variety that was left over from last year and allowed to sprout in the basement storeroom like a Medusa village on the countertop.  At least those are the plantings that I knew about.  Those trenches, it turns out, have more to offer than spuds alone.  

I had noticed aberrational stalks and leaves as the plants began to emerge.  Different shapes; different growth patterns; different colors than the rest -- in virtually every row.  I didn't think much about it earlier in the season, chalking up the variations to the vagaries of "nature" where, after all, not everything always matches.  Eventually, however, the more fundamental dimensions of the differences refused any further glossing explanations.  Something besides potatoes were presenting themselves.  "Some-things" actually.  Popping up here and there were plants that looked conspicuously squash-like.  And then there was something else -- familiar looking, but (incredulously now, looking back) I couldn't name.  I watched; and waited.  And all of it grew -- the potatoes, the unidentified squash-like vines, and the mystery foliage.  There is, I now recognize, even a marigold variety popping up that I had grown from seed last year in the greenhouse. 

When tomatillos began to emerge from the branches of the mystery bush that "mystery" was solved.  How I failed to make that identification earlier baffles me since there are multiples of them growing elsewhere in the garden.  But that "elsewhere" qualifier is an equal part of my surprise.  There were, indeed, some tomatillo bushes planted in those rows last summer, though they never amounted to much.  In fact, I counted the 2012 tomatillo crop a failure.  Apparently the remnants rallied over the winter, in search of horticultural redemption.  

The other interloping plant is more of a puzzlement.  They are, indeed, a squash-like plant, with bright yellow blossoms just like the zucchinis and yellow straight-necks, but nestled low and largely hidden by the vines and the encroaching grasses I discovered maturing several white pumpkin-like fruits.  Thus far the size of a baseball, I haven't a clue what to make of them.  I planted no such varietal last year or this.  There were some winter squash seeds I planted far too late last fall, but they were sown on the front side of the garden 50 feet away, and were ultimately ravaged by frost shortly after blossom set.  I neither recognize this fruit, nor fathom how it came to grow in this spot -- in multiples.  Rabbits, I suppose; or birds moving things around in one way or another -- but from where?  And when?  

The questions, of course, are curiosity rather than concern.  I count the misplaced plants a grace -- like discovering an Easter egg in October.  Seeds, after all, are meant to grow and these have miraculously managed to succeed at it.  I am only grateful that they found a habitable soil and hospitable neighbors, and will look forward to enjoying the fruitful precipitate of their sojourn.  

And in the future I will put an asterisk in my garden planner beside the names of seeds I've purchased and sown.  "These," my footnote will clarify, "are only what I know to be planted.

It's anybody's guess what all might really emerge.