A while ago I found Gladiolus bulbs for sale in a dollar store and a few days ago buds appeared. Now they are turning into flowers.
No, they are not colossal, but what fun anyway. Also in bloom is the Lantana plant that I rooted in water from a stem cutting taken last July:
The bedraggled Lantana below it is one of those I rescued in a hurt plant sale about a year ago and parent of two clones that I rooted from cuttings last summer. In a few years I expect to have beautiful plumbago shrubs all across the front of my home. The lantanas can become invasive so I intend to keep them confined in pots and well trimmed back, but when this one gets big enough I will take more cuttings and make more clones.
This what the Lantana clone looked like when I first put it out on January 30 of this year (about six months after having put the twig my neighbor gave me in water to root):
Out of seven stem cuttings that I put in water almost a year ago, two rooted. One died when I went away for a month and left it uncared for. The other is, as you see, flourishing. It took almost a year to get a gallon sized plant in full bloom out of the cutting.