Lessons Learned (the hard way)

Spring's Sprung!!!

First day in my garden! So many plants are up and healthy and vigorous.
Oregano! Tarragon! Mint!

Funny thing about the mint. I "confined" it last year, after a lesson learned the hard way. Mint doesn't just spread. It runs merry marathons underground until it is as far away as the other end of the garden. There, underneath the flowers, it stealthily pushes up stems and green leaves and then runs some more. Soon there is mint everywhere you look. Everywhere. A delight to have if all you want is patchy bits of mint throughout your garden. Not what I wanted.

So last spring, I crawled on hands and knees over the whole garden, pulled every bit I could see and put it all in a boxed bed - a repurposed construction the Larry had intended to use in another project. The "box" is bottomless but buried deep enough to prevent root spread. It worked! The funniest thing is that the mint did what mints do, and scurried along under the soil until it ran into that barrier. Then it scurried along the perimeter of the barrier. Round and round it goes, and since the barrier doesn't end, the mint keeps going, but only right up against the barrier!

I might have to plant something in the middle!

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That was last year's lesson learned. There were more lessons this year. Last year I succeeded in getting Queen Anne's Lace to survive transplanting to the end of my garden, where I thought I wanted wildflowers.

I LOVE Queen Anne's Lace. I DO! It isn't a native plant and IS invasive, but has a lot of uses. I'm known for walking along a quiet, little used "Robinson-tucky" dirt drive and gathering the flowers. First I debug them if necessary, and then I pop the flower in my mouth and it's lunch on the go! They taste resinous and tangy, and not at all like a food. But they leave your breath fresh for quite awhile; and I'm not dead yet.

They also make lovely pressed flowers for crafts - pretty lacy doilies to glue in your scrapbooks and never look at again until you see them crumbling out of the book. I'd rather eat them.

What Queen Anne's Lace does best is procreate; everywhere. For a year or so you think it didn't survive and then one spring your garden is covered with ferny looking shag carpet.

So, I pulled a bushel basket full today.

Do I learn from these experiences? Apparently not.

Wild White Yarrow



Goldenrod

These and several other invasive plants (all of which I purposefully transplanted to my "wildflower bed") added a little color to my fingernails, though I am not deluded into thinking I have the invasion vanquished.

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There are other "invasive" plants, however, that I was thrilled today to see chugging along slowly in their little corners.

Sweet Woodruff.

I don't have the lush thick growth I see in catalogs but I like how it spread out all piecey and scattered. It more or less scatters over 20 or so feet.

Hops

I first met hops climbing up through the scrubby trees at a campground, where we lived for almost 5 months waiting for our house to be finished. I tried unsuccessfully to get it to grow from cuttings. Finally I bought a plant and accidentally planted it in it's perfect environment. Right now it nearly covers the ground, but soon it will nearly cover the garden swing and a small arbor next to the native Witch hazel. Hops is native, as is Witch Hazel.

Wild Ginger

I bought one plant at Gene Stratton Porter's Wildflower Woods near Rome City, Indiana. http://www.genestratton-porter.com/WildflowerWoods.html

Porter was my mother's favorite childhood author and mom passed that love on to me. How cool is it that "Freckles" (my all time favorite book) was there ready for me to read over and over until I nearly have the book memorised - during the growing up years when mom used every opportunity to teach me (instead of "you can't do ____, because..."), "See? Look what you CAN do, because...". Gene Stratton Porter never met me, but she was there, in person, in that book. And she still is, and she never tires of saying, "You can do anything."

Here, at the Limberlost Porter Memorial in Geneva, Indiana, I was given a small cutting from a variety of house plant that grew in this window, when G.S. Porter lived there.

I have that plant still.

I have known, and forgotten, its name. It doesn't care what I call it. It just sits there contented, 6 feet up, and just about to touch the cathedral ceiling.

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But I digress.

Back to the garden. It was refreshing to see the Azalea blooming so well this year.

I thought I had lost it last year.

Just above the Azalea, in my "fountain" planter on the deck,

chives and sage are in fine form. Moss too. Yeah, I put the moss there last year. There was a bare spot. Well, at least the moss is native!

In the bottom "fountain" planter, the thyme isn't looking good. I hope it perks up, but if not I'll replace it.

This Aronia was new last fall,

and I kept it in the pot because it was so attractive in that bare corner next to the garage with the purple berries covering each branch. Now it's ready to bloom and so healthy! I'll plant it out as soon as I research where it will grow best.

Any suggestions?

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Just as I was getting chilled enough to go back in the house, I walked past the old relic -

That carved bear.

Larry won him at an auction in his hometown at Brush Valley Days.

Yes, we treated him just the way we were told to do. But that was 15 years ago, and like us, he has aged a lot. If you look really closely, you can tell he was a bear even though his nose and feet are gone. He frightened young children when he was new, but now he has nearly become the log he was made from again. I like him better the way he looks now.

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Now for a fitting way to end the morning .......a cup of hot tea, a sunny window, a wooden rocking chair, and a very old brittle copy of "Freckles".