Thomasville Times

As a gardener, you never quit learning



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Isn’t it funny how fast time moves these days? May is leaving and it seems to have just arrived. I feel so fortune to be sitting here on my porch in the cool of the morning enjoying a cup of tea while I put down my thoughts.

I am not thinking of what is going on in the world today. I am gazing out over my yard and enjoying watching my plants thrive. They thrive in spite of me, not because of me.

Here in the South, we say yard instead of flower garden because if you talk about a garden you are referring to a vegetable garden. Flower gardens are yards.

I am fortunate to have a pretty yard. Like I have told you before, if everything I planted had lived, I would be in the midst of a jungle. My yard is survival of the fittest.

Sometimes I can’t even tell it survived for a few years. There is a saying about plants. When you plant them, the first year, they sleep. The second year they creep and the third year they leap.

Well, some I planted many years ago are still here, but they are surviving, not leaping. I have this one little plant, a variegated Solomon’s seal that is still alive after many years but has never really thrived. It comes up in unexpected places but is just mixed in among the other plants.

I bought it years ago when there was an Al’s 5 and 10 in Jackson. I got some interesting plants there. I was just learning to grow flowers then. One plant I got from there that thrived so heartily I was forced to cut it down was a pair of what were sold as viburnums.

They were supposed to have beautiful white flowers. They didn’t ever bloom they just got to be 12 feet tall apiece. I guess what I thought were a male and female plant were not a pair.

After many years, I got a man with a chainsaw to cut them to the ground. There is stuff that is supposed to kill stumps, but when I read the directions, you had to drill holes in the stump and add it in the holes, not once but three times. I decided that was more trouble than I wanted to deal with, so I got on the internet and found another way.

You can just pour Clorox over them and one time is supposed to do it. I did. The stumps got a whitish cast and I think it did the trick. I know environmentalists will tell me I contaminated the yard, but that remains to be seen.

As a gardener, you never quit learning. Every year teaches you something new. This year, all of us watched our plants to see what would come back after the big freeze in December. Two of my favorite butterfly bushes didn’t make it.

Butterfly bushes are the South’s answer to lilacs. They have showy blooms and smell wonderful. Speaking of good smells, this is the only time of the year I like privet hedge and Ligustrum.

They are invasive shrubs that can be found at old house places including mine. My yard was full of them when I moved here. This time of the year, they bloom.

The combination of these two shrubs produces a unique odor that is both green and pleasing. One of my friends who grew up in the Black Belt says it smells like home when the two of them bloom.

We might celebrate them if we weren’t busy pulling up their seedlings all over the yard for the rest of the year.

I am reminded of another bit of gardening wisdom “A weed is only a plant out of place”.

There are certain plants I brought in to my flower beds that have taken over. Now I have to pull up what I have planted. Some things I just finally quit fighting like swamp sunflowers, and spreading monkey grass. I just work around them now except where I want to add something new. Out by the road, I made a pot garden, but over the years am replacing pots with flowering shrubs.

A garden is always a work in progress. I was very pleased when I returned from the family trifecta trip to see that my yard had come alive while I was traveling. Things that were dormant when I left had come alive and were showing out with blooms.

My goal is to have something blooming I can pick for bouquets all year around. May I live long enough to see it so!

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