I looked out the window, and what did I see?  A sprig of purple flowers emerging from my water hyacinth! 

I’m so pleased.  Everyone I spoke to (and all the books I read) while preparing this summer’s water garden cautioned me about buying flowering plants:  Apparently they need something like a gazillion hours of direct sunlight before they’ll bloom.  To which I said, boo, and planted hyacinths and lilies anyway.  Not surprisingly, since my balcony doesn’t get a gazillion hours of direct sunlight (I’m lucky if I get three), I haven’t had a single flower from the water plants all summer.  But now this.  Yay.

Also?  Despite its pretty petals, this friend has has quite the dark side.  “Noxious” comes up alarmingly often in plant-book discussions of the water hyacinth.  According to one booth that takes itself very seriously, it’s “one of the worst pest plants in California, Florida, Georgia and Louisiana; it can’t be shipped across state lines anywhere.”  Cool.  I feel like quite the maverick growing a baddy like this on my balcony.