Gift of gloves

Back from a weekend in Somerset with A's family and with a gift of four foxglove plants from the family garden.  When we moved to the house most of the plants in the path border had already flowered and gone over.  In amongst the azalea I found a single spike of something, full of tiny brown black seed, which I collected in a twist of brown paper and optimistically labelled "foxglove". 


I'm usually one for muted pastel colours in the garden but in a foxglove I can tolerate the blowsiest of fuschias. I love watching the bumble bees busy in and out of the tubular flowers and was looking forward to bulking up my solitary foxglove with some baby plants that would bloom over the Summer.  Casually mentioning my plans over the weekend I was more than a bit disappointed to learn that foxgloves are biennials and I wouldn't be seeing flowers for another year.   However, the disappointment didn't last for long because I left with four healthy foxglove plants which had self-seeded into a border the year before; these I planted into the shadiest end of my garden in a small drift with the hope that they will self-seed some more.