Striking Serendipity

For a brief interlude from alternating my buffalograss manifesto and some native wildflower pictures, but in line with the Native Prairie Weeks theme I've started, I thought I'd squeeze in a little serendipitous combination that is starting to "pop" out in my garden.  The picture below is a young start of a variegated 'Fiesta' Forsythia (Forsythia  x intermedia 'Fiesta), that has had its space invaded by a self-seeded Butterfly weed (Asclepias tuberosa).  I started the 'Fiesta' a summer ago as a cutting from another larger specimen and I had placed it on the end of a row of lilacs, intending it to become a summer focal point against the dark green foliage of the lilacs.  I guess that stirring the soil exposed long-buried seeds and the Asclepias won the rapid dash to the finish line.  Over time, the 'Fiesta will be taller than the Asclepias and the latter will become an accent to the former, reversing the current imbalance in height.  Regardless, I don't think I could have picked a better plant to bloom and compliment the light yellow foliage and variegation of the 'Fiesta'.  Sometimes, maybe all the time, Nature knows best.

But doesn't it make you wonder?  That it would coincidentally be Asclepias, named for the Roman god of medicine and surgery (Asclepius) by Linnaeus himself, that would so often grace the garden of a surgeon?  Or that this combination, chosen for its pleasurable appearance by and presumably to God,  also is pleasing to we mere mortals who can only admire the genius of the natural world?