This wee corner behind my house happened completely by accident when I wasn't looking.

The shrub in flower is a weigela, brought home three years ago in a truly piteous state by the spousal unit. He had been building a new deck for a woman and the deck extended over the area where the shrub grew. She decided she didn't want the weigela and told him he could have it if he liked.

The spousal unit, not being a gardener, dug up the shrub, knocked all the earth off its roots (so it wouldn't dirty the inside of his truck) and then put it in the enclosed back of his truck where it cooked in full sunlight for a whole afternoon. I wince just thinking about this.

When he pulled it out of the back of his truck the leaves were all shrivelled, the flowers fell off in droves. (Yes, he had lifted it in full flower, and every gardener will tell you that lifting a plant in flower is asking for mayhem and death). I figured it was toast. What shrub could survive that kind of punishment?

I planted it anyhow because I didn't want him to feel I didn't appreciate his gift, but chose an out of the way corner so that as the weigela pined for the fjords I wouldn't have to watch the death throes. If only he had waited a few weeks until it was done flowering, I thought to myself. If only he had lifted it with a soil ball around its roots. If only he had parked his truck in the shade ...

Well, some plants have an extraordinary will to live and that weigela is one of them. Not only did it survive, but it has flourished and grown about a third in size since it came here. No one is more surprised by this than I.

That mist of blue you see in front of the weigela is forget-me-not or myosotis to those of you who garden in Latin. I didn't plan for them to be there, the seed from this dainty biennial blew into the gaps between a miniature blue hosta that I am propagating in that nursery bed. I have no idea how they made it there, because the nearest forget-me-nots are a good 10 meters from there and downhill at that.

But somehow, they danced into those gaps and there they are. A pretty vignette created by a plant I didn't expect to live and some mischievous vagabond biennials.

Nature can be so very humbling.