Bloomin' Artichoke

This was interesting to me, so I thought I'd share. The picture above is of one of the artichokes that's been growing in my garden this summer. I've already picked and enjoyed several, man those things are yummy with some olive oil or butter and garlic! But, I actually didn't eat the very first one that was ready for picking. A little grub had taken up residence in it by eating his way towards the heart. I had pried him out with a popcycle stick and fed him to the chickens - he deserved his unfortunate fate for ruining one of my hard-earned summer treats. I left the artichoke he'd ruined on the plant for a couple more weeks as a decoy for anymore grubs that may have come along...there were several smaller artichokes growing at the time that I wanted to protect, so sacrificing the largest one even further made sense to me. Well, eventually I did pick a few of the un-lived-in artichokes and at the same time picked the ruined one and threw it in the general viscinity of our compost pile. The chickens like to visit the pile when they free range, so I figured they'd get it eventually. Well, about 3 weeks later I went out to throw some kitchen scraps out to the pile and I saw the most gorgeous bloom in a shade of purple off to the side of the compost. Maybe this is ordinary to some folks, but I've never in my life actually seen in person what an artichoke looks like when it blooms. I suppose I shouldn't be suprised, I did know that artichokes are flowers, but the seeing just how pretty this prickly but tasty little plant can be was amazing.

The green of an artichoke is one of my favorite colors...I guess because it falls into the "earth tones" that you see people use to decorate with in Tuscany, I love those colors. But the vibrant purple of it's bloom is in a whole different category! The picture below only somewhat does the color justice. It definately stuck out in a pile of decaying vegetable scraps and dead plant stocks from the garden. It's suprises like this that truly make gardening interesting to me.