Today was the gathering up of ten of the twelve remaining wing barrels. A couple short trips (one just three or four blocks), and one long looping tour.

Near the end, as I and the sleeping heelers neared town, I pulled over to the side of the highway.

It's harvest time.

And, at a couple different stops, I gathered up two handfuls of these.

The seed pods of penstemons. Prairie penstemons.

Already gathered a few other stems a couple weeks ago (never taking more than about a third of the stems of any one plant), but many of the pods were still green, so I'm not sure the seeds are viable.

The wife first spotted these tall plants, growing along a roughly eight-mile stretch of the highway, on one of our first benchmark hunting expeditions.

Pretty things, with long racemes of large, pale pink flowers.

Consulted a couple plant experts at the local federal office as to the identity of these new lifeforms. One had seen them, and assumed they were hollyhocks.

Uh, no. Definitely penstemons. Kinda lowered my opinion of his plant ID skills, but I guess I should cut him some slack, since his examinations probably took place at 65 mph.

The second suggested "prairie penstemon", which looked about right when I looked it up.

Not supposed to be here, though. Too far west. But he says it is a common ingredient in reclamation seed mixtures, because it grows so well and apparently likes a lot of sun.

Problem is, I remember when this stretch of highway was last graded and seeded. When it was rebuilt in 1982.

So, 21 years those seeds have been lying there, waiting for the right combination of heavy spring rains and hot summer sun?

Apparently.

Well, we've got a flower bed on the south side of the house that is so hot it kills just about everything except the weedy lilacs and asters, which the wife terminates with vengeance almost every year.

Some sun-loving, tall plants with huge pink flowers would look great. And would get plenty of moisture from watering the lawn.

Hence the seed harvesting operation.

If they all germinate, I guess we'll get oh, roughly 2,000 of those hardy plants.