Random plant event: Tagetes patula 'Durango Bee'

This is one of those things that I expect will be minor -- possibly even trivial -- to most of you, but it's new (more like "new") and exciting to me, so I'm blogging about it anyway.

When we first moved in here, I bought some 'Durango Bee' marigolds to plant, because . . . well, it's one of those cases where although I can see perfectly well why people might not like them, and sort of feel like I shouldn't like them much myself, I nevertheless enjoy them. It's kind of weird. (The flip side, not liking plants that everybody else thinks are awesome, happens to me a lot more often, it seems like.) At the end of the 2009 season, I collected a bunch of seeds, stored them over the winter, and then somehow neglected to try sowing them anywhere. So in 2011, I threw them all into an otherwise-unused spot, in hopes that maybe they'd do something even though they were old, and to my surprise, they did! And I posted about it at the time.

So then history repeated itself. I collected seeds in 2011, and then for some reason didn't do anything with them last year, so I scattered them into the Portulaca / Muscari bed on the off chance that they might sprout, not really expecting them to. Having already forgotten about the 2011 experience, I was then delighted when they unexpectedly came up again. And we've now hit the point where the first flower bud of the year has opened.

The main conclusion we can draw from this: there will probably be a post in June or July 2015 in which I excitedly announce that I've discovered Tagetes seeds can remain viable ~18 months after collection.

I should also probably note for my own records that the color doesn't coordinate with that of the Portulacas very well. I'm not bothered by it at the moment (we'll see how I feel once more of the Tagetes flowers open up), but they're too dark too look right, I think.