I’m grateful today for things that come back year after year, perennials. In the wild woods, these delicate native penstemons, P. comarrhenus, grow sparsely out of bare ground. Another name for them is dusty penstemon, which (this year anyway) captures the essence of their endemic range in the Colorado plateau and canyonlands of the southwest. I stumbled upon this one on the breakfast loop this morning; the flower spike seemed to have grown and blossomed within just a couple of days.

In the garden I’m grateful for perennial onions, which not only keep growing where they’re planted year after year, they also self-sow prodigiously. I started my patch with a small clump someone gave me, and they provide scallions and leek-type onions year after year. The bees love their flowers, and I can harvest the roots from early spring into winter. This year I’ve had to pull out my original nursery patch to make room for another crop, but I’ll keep mine going with a row along the back of the whole east bed. Now I’ve got a big box of perennial onions looking for new homes. If you’d like a clump to start your own endless onions, let me know right away. Otherwise, I’ll just chop and freeze them, but I probably won’t get to that until Saturday afternoon or Sunday. I’m also grateful, of course, for my little Topaz.

Free to good homes, there are enough perennial onions here to start half a dozen new gardens. Or fill my freezer; your choice 🙂