Lupines

These lupines are from plants my mother-in-law brought back from one of her many trips to her childhood home in PEI.  So here they are in my garden now.  These plants are LARGE! They are four feet tall, larger than the cultivars I see in other people's gardens.  They are happily settled in and bloom every year.  They were dug up originally from one of the many ditches in which they grow wild in PEI. They have started to self seed in my garden and I found little seedlings for the first time this year.  For many years I tried to grow the cultivars from the nursery, but they always died out.  But it looks like these are here to stay. So welcome to these immigrants from a rural route in Ellerslie in PEI. I think they wanted to feel special. They were in the ditch in front of The Handyman's family home and are now here forming a link from that home to ours.
You can see the little white hoods of the monkshood above the apple tree stump. This is a monkshood which blooms in the early summer.  Traditionally one thinks of Fall for monkshood to bloom, but this shorter variety likes to ramble in the garden among the bush roses and the lady's mantle which are planted nearby.