Opportunistic Garden

This morning I spent 45 minutes weeding our garden in an attempt to prepare to plant something. I know, it's July 4th! Most people's gardens are planted and flourishing by now. However, I'm a teacher and the spring planting time is also end-of-school time, with the rush to finish everything, write report cards... It's a runaway train. So gardening falls to the wayside. On top of that, Chicago has had a lot of bad weather -- torrential rains especially.

I am also not a good gardener. I love plants. I can do pots quite well and we have a lovely array of flowers and herbs in pots on our patio. It's low stakes gardening.

The garden that challenges me is the plot in our back yard that used to be our vegetable garden. We planted tomatoes, zucchini, asparagus, and so on, until our trees grew so large and shady that the garden no longer got enough sun to grow vegetables. It sat rather neglected, gathering weeds and fallen branches, with a lone rhubarb plant in one corner.

However, it does include a few accidental "crops." About ten years ago I made the mistake of putting a mint plant at one end of the garden. If you've ever planted mint you know that once in the ground you will never get rid of it! So at one end of the garden we have a mint crop. I pull plants regularly to keep it from taking over everything and they smell nice. Mint tea, anyone?

About 15 or so years ago, our then next door neighbor decided to plant tiger lilies on his side of the fence. We have had a couple new families in that house since then and the tiger lilies have disappeared from that side of the fence but have taken up residence in our garden. I have dug them out in the past only to have them return, so this year I decided to let them have a little space in the plot. They are pretty.

Our last unexpected squatter is strawberries. I think they probably migrated from the composter into the garden and are now established in one corner of the garden. They are pretty with tiny red berries, and the squirrels and birds enjoy eating them.

What about the rest of the garden? Some more work and then hopefully some new, shade-loving plants will join the opportunistic residents.

Our potted patio garden

Our shady garden with the opportunistic residents