h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

A week ago, that plum tree was lifeless. I went past it today, and it's full of foliage.

The yard around the perimeter of my trailer has become a hobbyist native plant garden over the last six years. this plays into whatever obsessive-compulsive tendencies I have.

I planted spiderwort and blazing star a few feet in back of my porch. I saw nothing coming up there, so I assumed they had not survived the winter. Now I see that they were just shy. They're coming up, all right.

I planted three Common Milkweed plants, two in front of my trailer, and one near the back of the porch. Milkweed isn't supposed to come up until the middle of June. It's the middle of May now, and it's coming up. IO guess they didn't get the memo.

All the Canada Mayflowers came up, including a clump that I don't remember planting
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The Virginia Waterleaf has come up, and is growing outward form the center (I hoped they would do that.) all the May Apples have come up. Most of the Swamp Milkweeds have come up. No sign of the Whorled Milkweeds or the Butter fly weed. Maybe *they* got the memo about June.

The Blue Cohosh has come up again, and is larger this year. It's hard to get to thrive, but it does spread slowly, they say.

The jack in the Pulpit colony is coming up en masse. When I planted it, I hoped I wasn putting it in a good place. Apparently I did. I just hope the Turtlehead and Jacob's Ladder would spread too aggresively and squeeze it out.

I meant those plants would *not* spread too aggressively.

The Virginia Rose bush is in the middle of my back-of-porch garden. It's supposed to be an aggressive spreader, so I will have to pull up any suckers that spring up around the center of the main stem.

Then again, if the rose and rosehips are beautiful, I might let it have a bit of leeway. The shade-tolerant perennial sunflowers will travel underground for a long way. If the rose shades it out, it will always just travel farther away from it.

The patio rose outside my front door is doing well this year - it flowered through the winter until a storm blew the last couple of buds away in January, which was unusual, but it flowered again in spring. It has peach flowers with green leaves, but a sprout with red leaves and a red-coloured bud has appeared, so it will be interesting to see that develop!

A friend who used to work in a greenhouse suggested that I plant a yellow rose bush in front of the Office. It was one of the best things I've ever planted there. The roses were enchanting last year, and it's full of foliage this year.

She also suggested that we plant some Clematis in front of the shed that's next to the office. She got a very fine one with light purple blossoms. It had beautiful blossoms last year, and has lots of buds this year. I was a bit reluctant to bother with Clematis (my brother said they were too fussy to be worth the trouble), but this seems to be benefiting form being in a pl;ace that it likes/.

This time of year is like a tonic for my nerves. Even when I want to feel bad about things, there are so many neat things happening around me (mostly to do with my labors of the past, of course) that I have something to look forward to when I get up in the morning.

In another thread, FWR said that Solomon's Seal is a weed where he lives. This is kind of an accident of fate.

In any event, though, most of what I'm describing is *falose* Solomons Seal. My plants are innocent.

Well, most of them are. I have some real Solomon's Seal too -- four of them, to be exact, and they have spread widely in the last four or five years. Anyway, if you were hard up for food, you could harvest the tender young shoots in the Spring and eat them like asparagus. You need to be careful about changing the water three times, though.
http://altnature.com/gallery/solomonseal.htm