What I See

Rivina humilis, Rougeplant

I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder and I’ve puzzled sometimes over what I’m beholding, especially when it comes to my gardens because I know they are in no way classical. If anything, they look like pure chaos. Plants are thrown together and sometimes plants which in other times would have been considered weeds are allowed to stay, just to see what they do. There are days when I look at  the garden and wonder what in the world am I doing.

This year, for instance, I’ve let the straggler daisy have a go in the front half of garden of the big oaks. Normally, it lives in the yard as ground cover along with the coastal bermuda and anything else that shows up and wants to be green. It’s a hardy plant and I think it won the battle with the blackfoot daisies, although the dayflowers are a partner to the crime because they too cover a lot of ground and I let them stay this year as well.

In the end, I think what I enjoy about my gardens is the movie of their life, the long march from  winter to spring and on into summer, then back to fall and winter. The turning green, the flowering, the living and the dying. What others might call a weedy mess but one that I feel looks natural and native. And I also like the idea that if one day I were to fall down dead in the garden they would simply cover me up, turn me into one of their own, and welcome me home.