To the Rescue..

At last, Ian is back for the season and there is now hope for my gardens! It was chaos out there. Last fall's clean-up did not get completed before the snow fell and I was feeling somewhat overwhelmed with all the work that needed to be done. But today? Ian to the rescue! 

My garden is chaos at the best of times..a hodge podge of plants, chosen with reckless abandon with no master plan in mind. If a plant grew, it stayed; if it liked its location, it flourished, multiplied and took over whatever space it wanted. Who was I to confine or dig out a flourishing plant? So what I have now is a jungle, a lot of invasive plants and an evil weed that cannot be killed. 

I knew nothing much about gardening back then when I began plopping random plants into empty spaces..other than that some plants like shade and some like sun. I know a little more now, but not enough; for instance, I knew naught about black walnut toxicity until recently.

I always wondered why the peonies, hydrangeas, rhubarb, magnolia, white birch and pear trees that I tried to grow back there over the years  - under the drip line of my neighbour's walnut tree  - did not survive let alone thrive!

Who knew a walnut tree could be toxic? Well, seems that the arborist who trims my black locust trees did; he pointed that out to me last year and suggested that perhaps I might relocate some plants?  It also explains why the Virginia Creeper is wildly happy back there, as are the day lilies, hostas and violets...it seems that they are not sensitive to that toxicity; so by the luck of the draw I had actually put them in the right place! Lucky me.  Twas a gardening lesson learned the hard way. From now on, I will consult the list of what a walnut tree does not like and plant accordingly! 

Meanwhile, Ian is here now to do the heavy work to get things ready so I can plant or relocate to my heart's content. Already I can see order returning - as misleading as it is. The mulch will hide the weeds and a bit of edging will fool the eye into seeing tidiness...It will look better, but beyond that? 

Chaos will still reign; but, as long as the flowers bloom and I can see lots of colour, and butterflies and bees, birds, rabbits, squirrels and chipmunks like it well enough to live out there, I will consider myself lucky.