If you blink, you miss it

On my way up to bed, I stuck my head out the front door to grab the mail. As I generally do, I took a look down at the new bushes, to make sure they hadn't turned completely brown and died overnight (anything is possible). I glanced back at the other new bush, and was pleasantly surprised.

The reblooming lilac rebloomed.

From what I could see, there was one mostly spent blossom and another that had just fully opened. There may be one or two on the other side I couldn't see from the door (barefoot and on my way to bed, remember?).

True, the blossoms were a bit thin, with the little flowers in each bunch far enough apart that you can see the center stem in the gaps. But there were flowers.

Maybe I'm not so helpless a gardener as I claim.

I'd not really expected another bloom this season, given the transplanting and that stretch of 80 degree weather we had - something like sixteen days of unrelenting heat, without much rain. I'd been soaking the bed when I could, but probably not as optimally as the plants would like. As I mentioned the other day, the bush has more than doubled in size, but the individual branches still look a bit spindly.

In an uncharacteristically cautious move, I kept the old wire trellis the clematis had been tied to pulling down. From the looks of things, I may want to eventually tie some of the lilac back, to keep it from overcoming the evergreen shrubs and blocking the front door. At it's current rate of growth, that is not out of the realm of possibility.

Speaking of growth - am I supposed to cut the lilac back at all, and if so, in the late fall, or early spring?