False Indigo, at last

Two years ago, I wrote about how I was trying to grow false indigo in my garden and not having too much luck at it.

The short version of the story is this. The false indigo already at the house when I moved in was in a crowded bed and not flourishing. And I took so long to figure out where to plant the new one I bought that it died. Bad me. I tried again. This time, things seemed promising, and the false indigo came up a second year and seemed to be on track . . . until something ate it.

Finally, 2 years ago, I bought one more plant, a kind of false indigo called "purple smoke" and put it in the main part of the garden. That first year, it was a single spindly stalk.

Last year, it had grown to three:

This year, though, turned out to be the year. If the false indigo tripled in size from year one to year two, it's more than quadrupled from year two to year three. I really am amazed:

I have taken umpteen photos of the false indigo, at varying times of day, trying to catch it in its glory, but I haven't quite managed it yet. I'm planning to keep trying, as long as it's in bloom.

But what this reminds me of is a saying someone told me about the first years in a new garden: "sleep, creep, leap." In the false indigo's case, that's certainly true. The leap was definitely worth the wait, and I'm delighted to be a witness to its ever expanding number of purple blooms. I always feel like I'm tempting fate to call anything a garden triumph, but for the moment, at least, this feels like one.