Weeding is a crap shoot because I can never tell which are the wildflowers and which are the weeds until they start blooming. Really, you could argue that all wildflowers are weeds – and sometimes I do just that rather than tend a bed.

One bed, for those playing along at home, is about 40 x 2, the other is about 15 x 3. There are no fancy patterns or clever design elements. They’re wildflower beds. I don’t understand why people put in wildflowers and then try to do precious things with them.

Now here’s the thing you have to keep in mind: gardening stresses me out. Gardening is not relaxing to me. Not the planting part, anyway. It’s all rather violent, if you think about it. When you plant seedlings you have to pull them out of those little plastic pots, you can break their little roots. I get very distressed about that.

And then there’s the digging. You have to dig little holes to put in the plants.

And there are earthworms in the ground. I get so upset if I injure an earthworm. I make little offerings to them to appease their gods, but I still feel bad about it.

I don’t feel bad about fishing with worms though. Fishing with worms is different than mowing them down in a drive-by trowelling accident while you’re planting phlox. Don’t ask me why. It just is. I’m the arbitrary sort-of Buddhist.

Grubs are another story. Again with the arbitrary rules…I toss the grubs I find to the cardinals. Nasty things. The grubs, not the cardinals. From a distance I must look like Snow White out there, with my cute little flock of birds following me around and singing happily to me. It’s the grubs. Make no mistake, those birds only love me for my grubs. I always feel bad about the grubs later though, because they’re immature scarab beetles and all – but they’re destructive, and I like the way the cardinals sing to me. It soothes me a little bit as I go about my unholy rampage of worm-decapitation and mayhem.

Since I was working out back I didn’t run into Walter, which is good, because there’s a whole other set of arbitrary rules for our friends the snakes. When I encounter a snake I try hard to repatriate it into the wild (okay, the neighbor across the street’s yard) but if they startle me I can make no promises. I know they’re beneficial, but I hate them. Walter lives in my next door neighbor’s front yard. Sometimes he comes over and suns himself on the rock border around my herb garden, even though he knows he’s not supposed to. He and I have discussed this, you see. He’s very pretty, actually – a brilliant emerald green.

Next time I catch him on that rock though it’s into the shoebox with a one-way ticket out of town. I didn’t encounter any snakes yesterday so I don’t know how I got off on this tangent. Oh yes, so here are some of the new kids: Scabiosa (pink mist). I have to admit, I’m a little worried about this one. It’s an import (from England) and my least favorite exotic invasive, English Ivy, is, well, English too. (I know. I’m a hypocrit. Let’s not talk about the bamboo, okay? I’m not perfect). What makes me particularly wary of this one is the prohibition from propagation that I found both on the tag that came with the plant and at Heritage Perennials. I don’t know if that’s a patent issue or if this plant has some potentially unsavory quality like English Ivy.

Nevertheless, I planted it anyway. The Scabiosa, not the Ivy. I’ve been waging war on that damn Ivy ever since I moved in here. (And this task is made all the more difficult because I react to English Ivy the way most people react to poison ivy). English Ivy is tangible proof that evil exists. Do not plant English Ivy in the United States. There are native groundcovers that will do the job. English Ivy is invasive and it wants nothing more than to damage your house and your fencing and to kill everything in it’s path. You will understand this if you ever have a 40 foot tall tree lean over your house the day after you buy it because it’s been weakened by Ivy. Then you have to pay a lot of money to have what was once a perfectly good tree removed. If I ever catch you planting Ivy I will personally come to your house and remove it. Are we clear on this?

Good.

I added a few more Coreopsis grandiflora (early sunrise variety) because they’re so darn cute. They self-sow nicely but I only had them in one bed so I bought a couple more to fill out another bed. I liked that this bed was all blue and purple flowers but it was a bit too cute that way. Eh, if it looks bad they can always be moved. Butterflies really dig these flowers.

At the back end of this bed I put in some lupines because the Hummingbirds like to have little orgies with them. There are few things as enjoyable as sitting quietly, drinking tea, and watching a hummingbird frenzy. Hummingbird feeders attract ants. Lupines don’t. Well, if they do, you have other problems.

The perfect edging plants for this kind of wildflower bed (read: unkempt and sort of Darwinian) are Alaskan Shasta Daisies. Neither Alaskan, nor daisies, I suspect. They are identified at perennials.com as Chrysanthemum weyrichii ‘White Bomb’. Okay, whatever. They’re cute, they don’t take over, and I can ignore them once they’re planted.

I filled in a few spots with some annuals, Gazanias. Some people claim that they can keep these going as perennials. Yeah, maybe in southern Africa, not here. These are really cute because at sunset you can watch their flowers close up, and then in the morning you can watch them open again. This enables you to deny that you’re just sitting and staring into space.

“Don’t bother me now, I’m watching the flowers.”

Gloriosa Daisies are another handy filler. They don’t always self-seed the way they should, but they’re easy to replace and they like to be ignored. I like that in a plant.