Sunday, May. 25, 2003
Dear Diary:

Forget-me-nots are rogues and scalawags, but since they're also one of the very few true blue plants in the garden they hold a special place in my heart.

Thugs.  Lowlifes.  Hobos.  Why can't they stay where I want them to be.They're biennials which means they come back from the previous year's seed, not the original plant. Each year I pull up the dying plants and shake their tiny seeds over those bits of the garden where I'd like to see a splash of late spring time blue or pink.

Each year they respond with, "Well, Marn, that was an interesting idea" and then proceed to grow anywhere they darn well please, which is mostly where I don't want them to be. This year that would be in the bed where I am trying to propagate some ligularia seedlings and some hosta.

Both the ligularia and hosta are quite peeved about the forget-me-not invasion and are struggling a bit. I tell them I feel their pain and will pull the forget-me-nots at the earliest possible moment so the dynamic duo can have the light they deserve.

Meanwhile the forget-me-nots continue to hog the light and water and taunt the baby plants I have been tenderly nursing. The lowlifes are smug in the knowledge that I love them too much to give them the weeding they deserve.

I know, I know. This is NOT a healthy relationship, but what can I say? Love does not always make sense.

Some plants ask nothing of you and give you the world back.Now that the big ka-BOOM of my daffodil meadow is over, I just have little splashes of early spring colour like these bright yellow trollius that I've paired with two kinds of bleeding heart.

They're the sort of plants that don't ask for much, are extremely well-behaved (Unlike Some Plants I Could Mention) and blossom at a time when the garden is a quiet place indeed.

Every time I look at them I remember a neighbour telling me that she had a Swiss friend visit one spring and the woman was simply incredulous that she was growing trollius in her garden. She said that in Switzerland it's considered something of a weed.

One woman's weed is another woman's treasure, eh?

It isn't just about the flowers, you have to remember the leaves.While I wait for the first early summer plants to blossom, I get a reminder that sometimes beauty isn't about big flashy flowers, sometimes beauty can be as simple as the interplay of colour and texture of leaves.

The spiky burgundy splash of awakening astilbe, the gold and green succulence of a variegated sedum, the richly veined leaves of the cranesbill geranium--you have to pause and bend down to see it, but it's there.

When I was a young child I remember watching a very eccentric neighbour lady working in her small city backyard garden. She would spend hours every morning weeding, clipping, fertilizing, and fussing about the plants that just weren't living up to her high standards.

This was a woman who was so passionate about her roses that she used to send her husband off every spring to catch carp so she could bury them under her rose bushes as potent organic fertilizer. I remember thinking at the time that I hoped I would never get old and weird about plants like she was.

Uh oh.

--Marn

Mileage on the Marnometer: 274.27 miles (441.3 kilometers) Ten percent there rubber duck.Ten percent there rubber duck.Ten percent there rubber duck.Ten percent there rubber duck. Half way smooch
Goal for 2003: 500 miles - 804.5 kilometers

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