The Tale of the Ugly Dahlia. Many years ago, I bought the last dahlia at Lowe's bc the kids wanted to grow flowers and dahlias are pretty foolproof. But this was not the cute, brightly colored puffball you see on garden Instagram. Oh no, this was the shame of the Coreopsideae.

The blossoms were a weird mustard-poop color. It never produced many petals. It looked more like a daisy that had given up on life than a dahlia. "Whatever," I thought. "Dahlias are annuals in this climate. We'll just buy a cuter one next year."

But lo: next year when the spring came, up came the damn dahlia. It had miraculously overwintered. I didn't have the heart to uproot it when it clearly had such a tenacious will to live. So we were stuck with the ugly dahlia for another year. And another year after that.

I promised it that I would take care of it as long as it kept sprouting every spring, and only get rid of it when it stopped coming back. I never got to *like* it exactly, but started looking forward to its tenacious little sprouts as the first sign of spring.

Whenever we had people over, I would introduce it: there is the ugly dahlia. I want to put in a pretty dahlia, but this one keeps coming tf back every damn year. It was practically part of the family.

So this year, I started checking the dahlia container in late March, when I usually start seeing little greenish leaves peeking up from the dirt. At first I saw nothing. "Not to worry," I thought, "We had all that late snow. It's probably just slow to get started this year."

I checked again the next week. No dahlia. And the week after that. No dahlia. The cherries had already bloomed. The daffodils were long gone. Still no dahlia. Yesterday I had a little talk with myself: chances were the dahlia had outlived its nine lives and was not coming back.

Today we went to Lowe's and bought a cute dahlia. Colorful, puffball-y, Instagrammable. But I found myself feeling a bit sad. You never really know what love is until you lose it. I started turning over the soil in the dahlia container to make room for its new occupant. And then-

I FOUND THIS. Absolutely the most FECUND mass of dahlia tubers I have ever seen in my entire life. Years worth of ugly dahlia tubers. Dahlia babies for days.

Nothing is ever really gone, including ugly dahlias. Life finds a way. But now I need to know--are these babies viable?? Typically they would have popped up by now, but I see absolutely no sign of green anywhere. Can I get them to sprout again somehow?