Freak of Nature

Freak of Nature
Originally uploaded by CreativeExile.

I was sitting in my backyard this afternoon while Tess dug in the dirt and played on her swingset, when I looked up at "my" garden (top photo...and note, I have absolutely nothing to do with anything growing there) and was pleasantly surprised at the colors popping out at me (hard to see in the shade, but popping they were!).

Granted, I have no idea what half of these plants are...I hate gardening. Well, I love it in the early spring, when there are no weeds and my plot of land is a bare landscape like a sheet of paper waiting to be drawn upon.

I do love the smell of dirt and even digging in it. I planted seeds along the raised beds in my driveway in late April, poppies (!) and zinnia, and the lone survivor of that useless experiment (a single orange zinnia, pretty anemic) is shown second from right at the very bottom.

But I hate the heat, I despise bugs, I'm terrified of bees and wasps (they reduce me to a quivering, flapping fool in seconds flat), and I've never been able to sort out baby weed from Possibly Beautiful Plant. Being pregnant increases the effects of all of the above, plus makes it impossible for me to bend forward at this point.

There's one flower I would love to identify this year: the tall white ones in the second row (far right) (astibille? sp?!). It is a HUGE bush. The pinkish/purple and yellow flowers next to it seem to be growing from the hens & chicks groundcover...not sure if that's a good sign or not. Is "going to seed" ever a good thing?

The decorative "Mom's Garden" rock sums it up...buried in weeds, there is an occasional treasure. Not the milkweed (bottom left) that grows to six feet tall and blocks the view at the end of my driveway. I keep pulling it, but it's very persistent, and the butterflies love it, so I let some go in the heat of summer. There was actually a butterfly flitting around before I took that shot, but it was impossible to capture on film.

Don't even get me started on the Queen Anne's Lace in the foreground of that photo. The only amusement I derive from it is when I catch the groundhogs munching it down to the ground in August.

Skipped ahead of myself there...second row from bottom now: I know daylilies pretty well, and the purple flower is some kind of "-bell." The vivid red flower is bergamot, or bee-balm (the butterflies like that, too, so despite it's terrifying name, I let it grow. It's really very lovely).

In the bottom row, I had a canvassing state rep candidate (and organic gardener, Sharon...?) identify that as purple yarrow. Finally, there's my belagured-but-still striving rose garden along the back of my house...as persistent as the milkweed, but I usually get just one round of blooms from the various bushes our seller planted years ago.