Beautiful Disaster

I think I hear an echo in here! Thought I'd show you just a little taste of what keeps me so busy that I don't post for weeks. This runs half way across the top end of our drive.

It is a mass of daisy, orange lily, weeds and the edge of a raspberry patch. I have whole sections of garden that look just like this. But if you look really hard, you will see a short, tangerine lily buried way in the back. See it?

That is the last of what used to be a huge patch of tangerine lily. It was originally here and when all the orange lily were moved out of here to allow the raspberry patch to extend, the rest disappeared. To top it off, the raspberry patch decided it would rather extend in a whole different direction, leaving weeds and more daisy in its wake. Nevermind all that bad news though, the great news is that I still have that lily. That lily is one of the many reasons why I don't get my husband to go through these 'should be empty' gardens and hack everything down with one piece of equipment or another.

Weeding Strategy

 

The flowers bloom even if you don't get around to the weeding. Just sayin'

Prairie Coneflower

My first discovery about country gardening was the seemingly unlimited variety of native plants, which most people call weeds here. Weeds or not, many of them were captivating to me. First came the wild rose with its' variety of pink shades in small flowers that open wide for the sun and its' remarkable adaptability to bloom under any circumstances. I have seen wild rose blooms high in the treetops, opening from a single winding stalk along the trunk and I have seen them bloom less than an inch off the ground, forced by a mower to open low yet looking happily upward. Just as delightful were the dark purple blooms of vetch. Although I work hard to keep it out of the yard because it gets big, tall and abundant, I let it go crazy in the fields because there is nothing quite as fine as the sweet smell of vetch coming in on a cool summer breeze. I also discovered a little white star flower that first year that I have yet to identify, honeysuckle in pink, anemone in white and the fall joy of wild cucumber vine when its' seedpods pop-pop-pop, providing listening pleasure around the fire. It was impossible for me to pick a favourite until late that first summer when the prairie coneflowers opened up. All along the roadside, in the ditches and fields, miniature sunny yellow coneflowers with long, dark, detailed cones appeared suddenly and everywhere. Sunny, smiley and optimistic is how they make me feel. I have tried to domesticate many of these wild plants. I move wild rose that comes up in the road to the lawn edge and attempt to get it to climb the bush. Wild rose tolerates everything well but being moved. You can mow it down and it will come up over and over but if you dig it, it sulks. I move the pretty little star flowers from deep inside the bush to the edge where their blooms poke out from behind and between other plants as little white twinkles. I move vetch from the yard to the field edge. Only prairie coneflower has been awarded a spot inside the garden proper though. Last year, I got to the field before the thresher and moved four plants into my garden. They are opening now and all I can think is that the patch needs to be about twice the size it is now. If I am going to beat the thresher this year to remedy that, I better get out to the field tomorrow because the fields are ready to hay now. Since I am never good with garden deadlines, I may just have to cross my fingers that these four produce a good amount of seed!

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.