Sometimes things just grow

Remember how I talked about accidental transplants?

So I planted the pots straddling the sidewalk in front of the house...bright red geraniums, spiky grass, some little trailing white flowers. The usual stuff for generic, classical, symmetrical pots.

And compost...gotta add your compost to help the plants!

(You see where this is going?)

Yeah, another little friend shows up in your pot.

In this case it was clearly some kind of squash. 

But hey, squash plants look cool; trailing down the pot with neat-shaped leaves. I'll just leave it because it's cute and it makes me laugh every time I walk up the sidewalk. (And not that it's really going to produce fruit, ha ha ha, but if it did, I like zucchini!)

And on day after a few weeks my husband says, "is that a squash growing out of the front pot?"

Maaaaaaaybe...

But really? It's in a 12" pot...how big can it possibly get?!

Ummmm....Ok, it's getting longer. Leaves are getting bigger. Whoa...really big!

I'm starting to think this is no longer a zucchini.

So once it's at least four feet long with dinner-plate sized leaves, I start panicking that quite possibly I'm growing pumpkins. Hilarious, right? I mean, at least our Halloween jack-o-lanterns would already be at the front stoop!

So I just let it keep going - marching itself down the tulip border.

Yes...I kid you not, that's what it looks like. Out of that little 12" black pot at the left trails a 10+ foot long vine with enormous leaves and throwing out more vines all the time. And blossoms! Don't forget the blossoms!

Finally the moment of truth has come. I look down at one of the dying orange blossoms and...

Oh my word, it's a baby butternut squash!!!!

So now I'm completely shading my hardy geraniums, but this is too hilarious to stop now! 

And there is no end in sight. It's now reached the driveway and shows no sign of stopping.

("Are you mowing now? Oh shoot, ok, let me go out and redirect the squash vine out of the grass." Yeah. I'm a mess.)

I now have an 8" butternut squash and a little baby brother on his way too (you can see him down a little ways below the larger one in the photo below). 

This may be my most hilarious (and delicious, I hope!) accidental gardening ever!

Tulip Border Fill

I found it! 

Having gone ahead with the tulip border, I was kind of getting down to the wire on figuring out what to put there once the tulips were done.

I did some research, thought I had some options, but while walking around the nursery, something that appeared to be even more magical stuck out...

Hardy perennial geraniums! 

Did you know they make such a thing?! I sure didn't.

They are a beautiful purple which claimed to bloom from late spring to fall...really? Skeptical.

Well, it's August and they're still going strong!

They do get to be 2-3', however since it's more of a trailing plant I just direct the arms sideways to fill in the bed and stay out of the grass (just poke in a short stick which keeps them in place and can't be seen through the foliage). I've actually been amazed at how well it's working and how great it looks!

I filled in with a few snapdragons, but I have a feeling that I won't need those next year if all the perennials come in fully next year. 

There are a few earlier-blooming perennials which I stuck in between the geraniums, so that'll give some color while the tulips are done blooming, but still have green stems.

Then by the time the stems start getting brown and gross, I think the geraniums will have started blooming and filling out pretty good.

We'll find out!

After the tulip greens died out:

I actually widened the bed by about 6" as well.

A smart person would have widened the bed and re-arranged the bulbs before planting the perennials, but noooooo, why would I have done it the logical way?! I was buying these and sticking them in the ground as quickly as possible because it was a crazy busy spring and started getting hot fast. Things didn't last in pots long. (I also had to buy the geraniums at separate times because the nursery kept running out.) 

So digging down under and around the the root balls to fetch and relocate bulbs was oh so fun.

THAT will be an adventure in the spring to see where the bulbs come up! Hopefully I spread them out enough so they're less crowded and so there won't be too many of them coming up directly under the perennial plants when the time comes for them to pop! 

I am really pleased with how they filled out the bed. They're beautiful!

Greetings from the Wildflower Garden

I don't believe that I have talked about the wildflower garden.

I love wildflower gardens. Groups of beautiful flowers that just grow, look spectacular and are low maintenance because it's not like a perfectly manicured bed where all weeds have to be removed from the crisply mulched sections between plants.

That's the theory anyway.

So I bought a packet of seeds last spring and we faithfully planted them between a rose bush, hydrangea, gardenia and a few other staples I'd slowly moved to this bed.


Yeaaaaaaaaaah, the thing about having a random packet of wildflower seeds with like 20 different kinds of flowers (and being a rookie) is that you don't have the darndest clue what the plants coming up look like**...nor the weeds along with them, ahem.

So last summer was an effort in constant trial and error...oooh, that's kind of pretty...let it grow...uh oh; I think that's a weed after all (what gave you the clue? That it's 3 feet tall and not blooming?!!)
And unfortunately I let some go way too long and so this year am reaping the horrors of weeds having gone to seed and spreading everywhere!!

It's a constant (and often neglected!) challenge, but I will keep on; weeding out weeds and unwanted flowers and planting wildflowers that I can actual recognize!
(It's also sort of become my "leftovers" garden...too many lily bulbs, daisies or tuplips when I thinned out the front? How about putting some in the back!)

There were a couple of weeks this spring/early summer where it really did look like how I'd always hoped!     So pretty!

** I had leftover seeds in the packet which I froze and decided to plant some more in a few bare spots this spring. One thing I knew for sure...I did NOT want Chinese Forget-me-nots in there! They have cute little blue flowers....and burrs. Oh so many burrs!! Trying to weed amongst them in an already overcrowded garden bed? [shudder]

So I had looked up all of the flowers listed on the packet and that's how I identified them. Next step? What do the seeds look like? 

Do you see where this is going?

Yes, I actually dumped out the seed packet and sifted through by hand to remove all of the Chinese Forget-me-not seeds!

It actually wasn't as hard as it sounds or as I thought it could be, but I thought the mental picture of me doing it would bring smiles.

It worked, too!

Accidentally Left Behind

Two of the only things we inherited with our house that we didn't immediately rip out and replace were peony bushes in the front beds.

They've faithfully come back year after year, however like many perennials, have such a short bloom and then you just have this big green blob (and I have enough of those) which then gets a grayish mildew on the leaves and so by the middle of summer it's an eye sore in the front of the house.

So I decided to transplant them to my more "wild" section of the gardens along the side of the house. I moved one in the fall and it seemed to be doing just fine and so followed with its brother (sister?) in the spring. That one didn't really bloom, but survived quite well so I have no doubts it'll be fine next year.

And then of course after a few months something in the front bed started popping up that looked awfully familiar...and I realized I'd apparently left a root behind! Oops!

"Wow, I feel a lot slimmer this spring!"