I was leaving for a few weeks, so I recruited the neighbors to water my container flowers and trusted the rest of the garden plants to fend for themselves.
Some of them overfended.
I didn’t even recognize the place. One patch I’d left tidy had gigantic, bodacious, voluptuous, almost tropical leaves everywhere. They looked like canopies the slugs had rigged up for their convention. You could fold one up if you had someone on the opposite corners. They were not unattractive, but they were all out of scale for the location. Upon further inspection, the truth was revealed. Cucurbita: the squash family. Which sort of squash I do not yet know, but from the size of the flowers, we’re growing zeppelins. I did not plant this thing. But in two weeks it had covered thirty feet of ground. There had been a salvia right there the size of a large ottoman and it’s nowhere to be seen.
I was inclined to let it romp. Last year I planted three kinds of squash on purpose. The delicatas had no stamina. The butternuts failed to nut. The acorns did fine, so the squirrels took one big chomp out of every one. Should I take this new development as a win? Perhaps if I wired up a scaffold for it, encircling the entire yard, it would pop out squash on the regular, like a sushi train. Or perhaps it should just be allowed to roam the neighborhood like Johnny Squashseed and bring cucurbita joy to all.
I was more puzzled by the grape leaf I saw sticking out of the pomegranate tree. I had whacked my grapevine down to two bare, flaky sticks last spring but, as I recall, those sticks were quite a ways away.
My pomegranates have been playing by the rules for a few years. I gave them a little plot to homestead and if they improved it, and stayed put for five years, the land was theirs. The poor things have worked hard and played fair but every time they manage to produce a few pomegranates, they keel over in exhaustion. And now this. A rogue grape leaf.
Worse, the grape and the neighbor’s evergreen clematis seemed to have joined forces. Imperialists both, they had set out new settlements far and away. Oh, I’ve seen this move before. I don’t think so, I told the grapevine. This is still a democracy, and I still have a vote.
By which I meant this is not a democracy, and I still have clippers.
You really cannot let this sort of thing go on for long, or before you know it you will have only two countries in the world: Grapeland and Squashistan. They will be ruled by autocrats and have no concept of the common good. Fine, Cucurbita says, biding its time. I’ll stay behind the border. Would you like a nice squash?
By which it means Would you like nothing but squash?
Unfortunately, my yard has been mostly taken over by invasives. The past couple years, I could not work in the yard due to arthritis in my knee. Paul took over, but without the two of us working at it, he could only do so much. Now there is just me. Though through a series of circumstances, I had to get my tree limbs cut back from my roof. A friend recommended this guy to me, and he did a fantastic job and didn’t charge all that much considering all he had to do. He went above and beyond. So I’m going to call him and ask him to cut back everything I don’t want. It may be a little pricey initially, but perhaps it may be easier for me to keep it up once it is done. If I can’t, I can call him to spruce it up twice a year. I don’t want to just give up on my yard, and I would like to be able to use it once in a while.
I call it “my yard” because people that actually enjoy working outside in the yard call it “gardening,” For me, it’s “yard work.” I once enjoyed it, but things change.
Things do change. I’m back to gardening! Took a bit of a hiatus there for a while.
Sweet autumn clematis is one of my favorite late summer flowers. I love the mellow cool scent. I was warned that it was an invasive exotic, but hey, it’s my yard! Most of the plants in it are exotics, why not something I like?
It started off small, just one wee plant that struggled to survive. The next year it was a little bigger, but still manageable.
This year the damn thing took off, burying my bonsai and lilies in an avalanche of greenery. Smelled wonderful all right, but the poor trees were completely enshrouded. Now I’m dreading cutting it back. There’s a whole lotta biomass there.
And in other quarters I let the common evening primrose take over the backyard this year. There was grass back there when I moved in eleven years ago but it got choked out by sunflower seed hulls from the bird feeders and shaded out by the burning bushes and the dogwood. The back lawn has just been dirt for years.
This spring I noticed that a bunch of common evening primrose had come up. CEP is a two year plant. The first year it is a ground hugging rosette. The second year it puts out a flowered stalk that can be nine feet high!
This was year number two and I decided to leave the plants alone so that the soil would be anchored in place and maybe enriched.
Well, I got a whole plantation of eight and nine footers and also some knee high stalks that are either under-achievers or a related species. CEP has woody stems so there’s going to be some serious cleanup. They did put out a bunch of flowers which made the local pollinators happy and also gave me something pretty to see from the kitchen window.
Not sure what the neighbors think about either the clematis or the CEP.
I was taught this- “The first year they sleep, second year they creep, third year they leap.”
BC that is totally true. Bruce, you can have your evergreen clematis. The Thing From Next Door wants to occupy my entire yard.
yes- last year I had one baby primrose- this year there are two overachievers- ….. but since they grow in the sun blasted west facing porch front- I love em for what they are……. may regret it, but they are pretty
Shoot, they’re like foxgloves and a lot of other things. Easy to thin out in the spring and just leave them here and there.
We had the usual plethora of zucchini this year, although we managed to pick most of them before they resembled the fat end of a baseball bat. Loads of cherry tomatoes too—all in a small deck garden, not a grand space like you and Dave have, Murr. I don’t have anything suitable for making a topiary salamander but I have a shrub that looks a bit like a chicken so I’m going to help it along.
You can always smack it down to an egg, in a pinch.
Here in California I have to baby any plants I want to see thriving. The ones that do well on their own are the weeds and the Angry Panthers (oops — I meant Agapanthus).
I encourage all of those! They don’t take over. But they’re pretty compliant all told. If they freeze over the winter they won’t bloom the next year, here, but they haven’t yet entirely died.