While checking on the progress of my transplanted winterberry bushes in June, I chanced to look down on the damp ground where I had inserted them, and found to my delight that I had a Jack-in-the-pulpit growing by the stone wall there.
“Jack’s” form was only a brief presence as I monitored the large green leaves expanding above him up to a foot-and-a-half high, but my next job was to watch “him” grow into a fine corm over the summer months.
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