What your garden gets up to while you're away

So I was away overseas for 3 weeks, in the middle of what I'm told was a weird summer that featured both a heatwave and a hailstorm. My housemate watered and tended my garden a little in that time, but not enough to stop it from getting a bit out of control. But being left more or less on its own leads to a few unusual occurrences that I wouldn't have seen had I been looking after it in that time.

This bamboo was fairly uniform when I left, but then this single spike shot up dramatically.
Bamboo is the fastest growing plant in the world.

This is actually chicory, a somewhat bitter leafy green that I use to make Greek horta. Having constantly picked at its leaves, I'd never witnessed its beautiful blue flowers.

This is a chrysanthemum, but a variety that I have been growing for its leaves,
rather than its flowers. The leaves are common in Chinese cuisine, known as tong ho.

It may look impressive, but size is not everything.
This sort of thing needs to be harvested
when about half this size, as the flavour suffers
 with increased growth.

This is actually dill. It likes to be watered regularly for leaf production.
Without that, this is the result.