yard

feel free to click on these photos to see the skill of our new camera. i just stood in front of the flowers. the camera did everything else.

my apologies for the formatting. nothing looks the same on the blog as it does in preview and adjustments don't seem to make things any better.

we have been doing a bit of digging in the yard, planting some things and pulling up others. it's really pretty arbitrary what folks decide to call a weed, but usually it has something to do with how aggressively something can take over a space and how pretty it looks to us. for example, periwinkle is a noxious invasive monster of a creeping plant laying waste to vast tracts of land according to some folks and others will swear it's a godsend, saving an eroding slope by spreading itself out and holding the very ground in place. at our house, we're learning we like a little bit from each category.

when we moved in we inherited a flowerbed full of granny flowers. after a year of secrecy from a stand of irises, things started exploding this weekend. i had been hoping for some super old fashioned bearded blue irises but was surprised how much i couldn't stop looking at the yellow ones that bloomed instead. that is about the most delicate color yellow you'll ever see.

last year was a pretty sad year for the lily of the valley, foolishly planted by someone years ago in the one spot in the yard with direct sun all day in every season. a little mulch and help from the shade of a now-robust rosebush have produced an incredible amount of foliage and a respectable bunch of tiny white bells. quite an improvement over last year's three puny stalks of brown-edged flowers struggling to hide beneath two wilting clumps of leaves.

there are more to come. the rosebush is hefty and the peonies are fattening up a pile of buds. the day lilies are preparing for a summer-long assault of glorious orange. but we're noticing that along the edges of the yard, near the trees in back, the forest, cleared in this part of the valley at least a hundred years ago, is creeping slowly back. the flowers we see on trails huddled under ferns or towering over mosses are underfoot in the yard, as well. and at first we mowed them down, chopped them up, composted the little things because we didn't even notice them. but we're letting a few of them stick around a bit. we certainly haven't had much luck with grass in the shady, spruce needle covered parts. but these flowering wild things weave in and out of one another and seem to be laughing in the face of all those spruce needles. since we share a common border with an abandoned factory and a family who keeps their garbage in the back of a boat, we do not worry too much about experimenting with a more wild version of lawn.

here are a few of our more helpful new flowers. my apologies to those who might actually be able to identify them. my own knowledge comes mostly from a canadian wildflower book i found for two bucks at a bookstore. feel free to correct my mistakes. the little blue ones to the left grow in the lawn. i mow them down without seeing them most of the time, but after our two week absence from the house allowed a complete jungle to establish itself, these things popped up everywhere. they are so tiny i'm not sure how bees could even find them.

these white flowers grow in the shadiest, rockiest part of the yard, the part that was most likely the official dump site for past residents. of course, as you know if you read occasionally or check out the right column, the non-official dump site is the entire yard. these flowers top tall plants that are neither completely viny nor completely stalky. they tend to be companions to some low-growing ground cover with geraniumish leaves.

we found tons of this yellow cinquefoil (at least i think that's what it is according to canada. it does, after all, have five ruffly little petals) all along the roadside near dry brook and then we went back home to find some right in the middle of the yard. the sweetie, quickly becoming an expert in the field of old lady flowers and weedish wildflowers, spotted the first ones growing low to the ground. only a few, but they sure are pretty.

we noticed the forget me nots right away last spring and the sweetie's first response was to insist they be mowed down in an attempt to eradicate all non blade grass from the lawn. these things grow all over the front yard and this year i managed to convince the sweetie to leave a few clumps up next to the trees. i'm not sure what's softened him, but he seems more tolerant of interesting and less desirous of manicured. nothing else manages to shove its way up through the thick mat of needles in the front yard under the two big spruce trees (yes, we've raked. a lot. the trees keep making more.) so they're welcome to stay.

this wood poppy grows in fairly large stands in both sun and shade, all around the edges of the yard. the clumps are thick enough in places it looks almost like a shrub. it has come over from the neighbor's yard where it's the nicest part of what's there. it grows tall enough to hide the broken pieces of house that have fallen off and into their yard. thank you, wood poppy.

we will never have the sort of lawn you see on golf courses, but i think i would be depressed looking out the window or gazing off the porch at such unending sameness. i like coming up each weekend to discover new opportunities sprouting in the yard.