Nevergone

I think there are plants that deserve the name “Nevergone”. For no matter who first planted them, and how long ago, they persist on the roadsides and the old dooryards. and in long lost gardens out in the fields. Honesty is one of these, as is the old orange daylily, and the bearded iris. The last two persist by tuber and root. Honesty reseeds wherever it is safe from string trimmers, over weeding, and the smothering of mulch. It germinates the first year, blooms the second. Then it tosses its silver coins to the wind and soil to let them care for its descendants.

The part of the house I rent was built around 1740. There is a dam and mill pond behind it, and my landlady told me the original Colonial family raised twelve children in it.

Maybe they planted Honesty from seeds from an old cottage garden in England. Maybe in the next almost three hundred years someone else did. Maybe the same person who planted the yellow foxgloves down on the edge of the woods.

Last year my enemies, the woodchucks, chewed their way through half my dooryard garden. No more New England asters or phlox. No more zinnias, marigolds, or cosmos.

I donated the perennials the woodchucks favored to a local historical society garden that I am volunteering to help restore and replant. No woodchucks there, though I know a deer has visited.

As for my dooryard I will have to fall back to what has become a goldenrod and salvia collection, with a few roses tucked in.

The cost of shipping mail order plants this year is staggering. Buy $60.00 worth of plants from California or Louisiana and pay $40.00 for shipping. That I am willing to pay shows what a plant lunatic I am!

As I have picked up the blogging pen for this season, I hope to include some pictures of the garden beds I am volunteering to care for, but the garden is new and the season is young, so the enterprise will be a work in progress-