Since the tax assessment people call my shack a cottage, I suppose a cottage garden would be appropriate, although chaos is more like it. In the back end, where I have bow sawed down some black cherry trees, some elm trees that always grow just large enough and just long enough that I begin to hope that I have one immune to elm disease, and some sumac, poison ivy, wild elder berries, blackberries that never bear fruit and numerous ten foot weeds I have been attempting a sort of perennial border. I am considering dropping this idea and planting dahlias which for some reason grow well in the potters clay back there. Really--they make bricks and used to make flower pots from the clay in the wet lands around me. I call that part of the garden Eden after the fall. The border has been a disaster. Cup weed grows ten feet tall, but both yellow thalictrum and yellow foxgloves are dying. Monarda spreads all over, coreopsis dies., seed grown kniphofia has not bloomed but at least lived through the winter--now what do I do with the flattened green leaves? Zebra grass falls over and last summer a tree fell on the whole mess. And why did I think forget-me nots were quiet little biennials?? They spread in stem rooting mats all over and even choke the daylilies and tulips I thought would look good with them. Then I planted a couple hundred daylily seeds back in there----but why did I plant glads by them?? But my wife likes the first seedling daylily to bloom there in 09---now there are a couple hundred crowded seedlings started fall of09. I think I lack organization!
