Heirloom Mum's....clear...40*

We've talked quite a bit on this page about the endurance of the jonquil, how it comes back year after year in the old homesteads, long after the people that planted them and oftentimes the farm, home, and all other remnants of the yard are gone............ I talked about how I got my start HERE
We have other such enduring plants here as well, the heirloom roses, such as the Cherokee rose and Seven Sisters rose you can read more about that Here  and HERE .
There are others too, the old- old pear trees, no one seems to know a variety or an age on them, they are just there, and seem to always have been, each tree has a fruit with a unique taste, we have two of these 'wild' pear trees in our yard and neither taste a bit alike even though they grow side by side, on my daughter's farm there are three such trees planted in a row, they look like they've been there forever, gnarled and ancient, they were told when they bought the farm from the folks that had lived there nearly 30 years that THEY were told by an elderly neighbor that the trees were over 100 years old then! They still bloom and make fruit every year, then there are the wild plum trees, that make a delicious syrup if you have 10lbs of sugar to spare in every batch----their a tad  tart!
But I interrupted myself, what I was going to tell you about is the enduring flower that we have blooming right now. An heirloom mum, now this one isn't one I see everywhere I go, like the jonquils of spring........But it sure does brighten our yard every fall. We were given a start about 20 years ago, from a neighbor who had been given it, "After a funeral, many years ago" not knowing what else to do with it they had planted it, and it had come back year after year, and taken over a whole corner of their yard, so they were happy to share a start with us.
Now I don't know if this was a 'typical' mum when they received it that had reverted to it's heritage once planted, or if they had gotten it so long ago that it was before mum's had been bred into tidy compact balls, but this mum, doesn't know when to stop, it spreads like mint sending runners underground to pop up feet away from the parent plant, it looks dense enough in the spring when it comes up a dark rich green, but by this time of year (no matter how much we "pinch" it back, like you are suppose to do, to make mum's behave)  it has managed to shoot itself a good two-three feet tall, falling all over everything around it in the process, and then , come October, it starts to bloom, abundantly and persistently! It always seems to get a frost or two on it, and I've seen it coated in ice, and dusted with an early snow, and never even fazed, it will bloom till we get a hard freeze! The last thing to bloom in our garden every year...something to carry us over till the Jonquil's come up in the spring...................