@deetoo me too! I love them so much!
@unk-p If you love Kingsolver, besides Animal, Vegetable Mineral, is Flight Behavior, a novel about climate change. I loved it so much, I read it twice.
@jeanne-mayell Yes. Kingsolver is so funny and cool, even as she writes about really important things. I wish i knew her in real life, and we could just hang out and talk. I guess i will just have to read all of her books instead!
@claire and @deetoo i once lived in a rent house with a patchy, mostly dead lawn. So i planted wildflowers, and native plants, and young trees, which took over. Then, a neighbor starting complaining that i needed to cut my lawn. I invited him over, and told him that it was not a "lawn", it was a meadow. I pulled a pair of scissors out of my pocket, and told him to show me where there was any lawngrass, and i would cut it right now. He gave up. Later, i heard him telling his wife that he could tell that i was never gonna cut my yard, because "just look at his ha-yer!" ha!
@unk-p, I like your attitude! Who cares about lawn grass when you have a meadow? You can only feel sorry for the guy who has no vision other than what is locked so tightly in his own mind. The world would be a boring place in that case. My neighbor loves his lawnmower. In fact, he mows twice a week. I don’t know what he is mowing exactly, but it never lasts long and I guess makes him look like he’s doing something. I don’t think his garden is very interesting, but it IS heavily manicured. He also has Mosquito Joe come a couple times a month to poison his yard. I guess he doesn’t realize mosquito larvae is food for the fish in my pond, and I am not adding to his “problem”. I don’t know why he has mosquitoes, because I don’t. He obviously doesn’t know that running a fan outside is a non-toxic way of keeping them out of your sphere. To each his own I guess!
What a great forum topic!!
I grow everything from radishes to rhubarb. There is something immensely satisfying about harvesting your own stuff. Sometimes it gets tiring battling the wildlife for it, but I put out peace offerings in the form of corn cobs and seed and lettuce, which they mostly ignore because they prefer harvesting it themselves as well.
I like neither completely manicured gardens nor full-blown English gardens. The first is too Edward Scissorhands subdivision and the latter is too wild for my touch of OCD, so I have a mix. Foxglove, delphiniums and snapdragons (#1 favorite!) are beautiful, along with the neater marigolds, geraniums, daisies. Not a huge fan of pansies unless they are really unusual, like the deep purple kind with white dots. Don't like bulbs of any kind. Gorgeous while freshly blooming but scraggly after.
I have an obsession with cucumber plants. They are challenging to grow while keeping them bug and fungus-free, and getting them to produce fruit that isn't bitter. It would be way easier to buy them but I don't back down from a fight. LOL
posted by @unk-p:
I heard him telling his wife that he could tell that i was never gonna cut my yard, because "just look at his ha-yer!"
@unk-p, You made me laugh this morning, and I really needed it. Thank you.
Growing up in the city I didn't have to deal with lawns, which might be partly why I find a lot of suburbia too confining and "Edward Scissorhands subdivision" (thank you, @Polarberry!) for me. I sort of equate the hustle and bustle of city life -- and specifically, the funkiness of Baltimore, which is where I grew up -- with the rich, wild, and beautiful natural works of art that you and @claire have created.
Our front lawn is not that big and is predominantly weeds, which gets a weekly mow. It's very humid out today and I just came in from pulling up a ton of toadstools. If I could, I’d remove ¾ of the lawn and just add different vegetation and trees. I’m not sure what our town’s restrictions might be, or if there are any. Fortunately, there is no homeowners association to deal with.
Ever notice that men wait until the hottest part of the day to mow? I asked my husband about this and he says, "it's gotta get done!" Yes, OK, but why does it "gotta get done" at high noon?
I'd ask Unk, but, he just says no to the mow.
@deetoo i hear you about suburbs. My little jungle is in the inner-city, so the best (for me) of both worlds! Even when i lived in the middle of San Francisco, i was lucky enough to have a back yard, which i filled w giant tree-ferns, bromeliads, and all kinds of stuff.
The meadow yard was in Texas, and the neighbor guy had probably never seen anyone w Nyabinghi style dreadlocks down to his knees before. Nowadays i just rock male-pattern baldness lol