My Garden

In mid-summer, we'll have lived in our house for six years, and I'm finally feeling like the garden is coming into its own.

I spent yesterday morning happily puttering around, rearranging the shrubbery, as it were. I was tired of looking at bare dirt under the blueberries, so I dug up some woodruff from under a boxwood, and tucked it in under my blueberries. I then hacked up a couple of clumps of liriope, and edged the berry bed with it.

From one small pot of white forget-me-not, I've now got a hillside - forget-me-not living up to its name - so I moved a clump into a pot and gave it to my mother-in-law. I also gave her an alchemilla that had self-seeded in a crack in the corner of the stone steps. The alchemilla might not make it, but I couldn't just pull it out and toss it in the compost. In turn, she gave me a baby spirea with pink flowers and yellowish foliage that she'd found under her big one. I don't know what variety it is, but I think I'll stick it in the privet hedge that borders the neighbor's driveway. I hate that hedge, and I am desperately trying to turn into a mixed hedgerow because the privet is both boring and labor-intensive. I have, thankfully, trained the neighbor to not clip the privet with the help of strings staked alongside; the ensuing straight lines made me twitchy.

There's a bed in the front of the house that got planted out a few weeks ago, mostly with stuff I bought by mail order. I'm a sucker for Bluestone Perennials; they sell tiny perennials in cheap three packs and even though I lose a fair share of them, I keep going back for more. Since I planted that front bed, and drew a little picture to remember what's what, I keep adding and moving. The poor little things are like pawns on a chessboard getting shoved hither and yon, and my little drawing is increasingly hard to read.

I'm also trying to beautify the wooded lot across the street - it's owned by the town, and completely unmaintained. So, every time I dig out more wild tawny daylilies or the gooseneck loosestrife that's meandering over from the other neighbor's house, I tuck it in across the way and hope it takes off. Since they both tend towards the invasive, I'm hoping for a riot of flowers uphill.

And, because I like to cook too, I like that the garden provides bits for the kitchen. Over the weekend, I made a rhubarb pie-cake (it was called a cake, but it was more like a pie, and while it was fine, I don't think I'd make it again), and two rhubarb upside-down cakes to give away. And snips from the chives and the Egyptian onions found their way into a beet-quinoa-grapefruit salad.

What's growing in your garden?