Current gold

One last word on forsythia renovation: the root stock on older plants — as long as they’re healthy to start with — will have enough energy to push out new, vigorous growth in a hurry. The photo of the renovated, blooming bank of forsythia in my post from April 7 (Radical Renovation) shows rampant growth one year after the whacking back. It looks a little wild, doesn’t it? The plants needed to get their photosynthetic little solar collectors (leaves) up in the air and positioned to do their work as quickly as possible, and every single stem is competing for dominance.

This photo, taken last week, shows how that initial wild growth settles down. After such a frantic rush to grow out, and also to reproduce (plants experiencing extreme stress often will have the best flower show; in reaction to the threat of death they flower heavily in attempt to replicate themselves), the stems on this bank of plants have relaxed into the plants’ typical habit. The flower show is more subdued, too, and a bit more balanced than earlier.