My Garden is Keeping Me Sane

Well, I guess that’s relative, huh? But I can zone out to a task in the garden, with or without listening to music or a book, better than TV or reading (with my eyes) or exercise or anything else doable these days. The task doesn’t have to be much. It’s the micro-examination of each piece of the yard, noting small changes. And, the step back and overview of what should come next.

My plan is to spend a few years (5 or so?) focusing on garden projects and intensive maintenance. By then, I want to have my yard in a place where it is more easily maintained. I plan to spend my declining years sipping cocktails in a beautiful yard that I can mostly just enjoy. I’ve never spent anywhere near as much time out there as I am right now. Everyday, new ideas and new projects surface.

Allegheny pachysandra emerges bright green and by fall
 flattens out to mottled and interesting foliage.

This past (migrainey) week has been spent on gentle projects. I’ve refrained from trips to buy more stuff, and didn’t tackle any of the bigger, more vigorous projects. But looking closely one day, I saw how the Allegheny pachysandra (not to be confused with common garden-center pachy) was spreading into the alumroot. I spent a very enjoyable hour or so digging the alum root and moving it to a new area. I planted the pachysandra a very long time ago, but it got overwhelmed with English ivy and myrtle, and it’s only really surfaced and spread since the fence went up two years ago and I got rid of the ivy. I’ll be content to have the pachysandra continue to spread, without further work, rather than have to defend the alumroot each year. The alumroot in the right conditions will form decent sized clumps, and I have enough bare ground waiting for just such a thing.

Here you can see the surface runners of the
Green-and-Gold

I am filling in bare ground inside the fence, in a shady area that drops off steeply to the neighbor’s yard. I saw an opportunity to be frugal and avoid trips by relocating some other cool plants. I may have pointed out my green-and-gold before, a plant also planted “years ago” that continues to thrive and spread to new places in the yard. It sometimes out-competes more delicate ephemeral wildflowers, so I am removing it from some places, while allowing it to spread in others. So some of that got relocated to a large, mostly bare, spot on the side.

Golden Alexanders is one of my wildflower triumphs. At one point, I got ambitious and tried to start wildflowers from seed. Many perennial wildflowers are very hard to start from seeds, and viable seed for the hard-to-start is hard to come by, because there is not much demand. A source no longer available, the New England Wildflower Society, used to have a seed sale each January. It took two years of learning to successfully buy from there - it was a brief sale without a lot of supply, done via US postal service. Finally, I got seeds for a bunch of varieties. Most didn’t come to much, but it turns out Alexanders are relatively easy. And once established, they seed themselves. Now I have a thriving colony, outside the fence along my stone wall. They seed themselves into the grass there, and I dug a bunch out and put them right away into the nearly blank canvas along the fence.

Golden Alexanders have lacy yellow flowers in spring,
and nice heart-shaped leaves all year.

Now, it’s time to step back and let things in that area just evolve for a while. There was a spicebush and a hosta that predated and survived the fence construction, and I’ve put some ferns in there. Except for some weeding and watering, I’ll just observe that area for now and see how things settle in.

My formerly blank canvas along the fence