Blind to Green

Having recently been in Linda's garden and then being back in mine, I have been thinking a lot about the differences. Linda and I have been talking about them a lot too. Mostly about the bugs and the weeds. Her bugs. My weeds. I have come to the conclusion that what saves me from my overwhelming organic battle with weeds in the garden and on the property in general, is my voluntary blindness to green. In fact, it took me a long time to appreciate foliage plants like Coral Bells and Hosta. My favourites are still those that have striking differences like 'Loyalist' with its' twisty petals and bright green strokes that almost glow neon in the sunlight. In my garden setting, the foliage groupings also need to obviously contrast to catch my eye. Combinations like Coral Bells 'Key Lime Pie' and Hosta 'Halcyon' will get my attention but others like sedum and summer phlox will all blend together in my view unless they are blooming. I think it is self-defense that my visual range does not seem to distinguish between medium green after medium green. It means that I don't see most of the weeds until something is blooming near them. An added bonus side effect of this odd visual tick is that things like the wild cucumber vine (above) can get very big before they surprise me. Linda would have pulled this out at the two leaf stage because it would have jumped out of her gardenscape at her like a sore thumb. I love wild cucumber vine. It climbs anything including phlox above and often ends up looking like little leaf steps. Although the white blooms are insignificant, it gets big, prickly seed pods that look like little, round cucumbers and make delightful popping sounds in the fall when they drop seed. Like most wild things, they do not like to be moved. Dropping seed is often a better way to get them in specific spots but many wild things also do not like to be placed. I have tried to drop wild cucumber seed more than once here and it has never taken. Happily, it still pops up here and there in my garden on its' own.