Dirty Tales from the Garden - "volunteers"

I do have some help in my gardening - Hubby and the Munchkin take occasional watering and weeding duties - but the primary planting decisions, and most of the planting, weeding and watering, is done by me.

Most of...

And yet it seems every year that plants come up in places where I did not recall planting them. I know Hubby won't move a plant unless I specifically ask him to - and the Munchkin wouldn't know yet to replant something he'd pulled out. Sometimes I am not even sure if it is a good plant or a weed that is coming up - and so I leave it in to wait and see - and then am pleasantly surprised when it is something I did not remember planting in that spot.

And I didn't plant it there. The squirrels did.

We have a nest of active busy squirrels in our black walnut tree and use our back yard as their playground - they have no problem digging up tulips, grape hyacinth and daffodil bulbs and moving them from the flower bed to the middle of the lawn, or another flower bed, or a crack in the middle of the driveway. They think nothing of it.

And this year - oh my - this year the squirrels and the birds worked together to plant nearly every single sunflower seed that they chose not to eat - and I think ALL of them came up! We have sunflowers everywhere -enough that the Munchkin now thinks we live in Sunflower Valley. Of course -the fact that he also thinks all my black eyed susans are sunflowers helps that idea...

A few of the flower heads have already had visits from lots of bees -and the sunflower seeds are forming. Not knowing what variety these were - I am not going to try to eat these ourselves, but will definitely dry the heads and set them out for the birds and squirrels to eat, enjoy, and perhaps even replant.

I am already looking forward to what surprises NEXT spring and summer will bring.

Garden Grown Wild

Gardens are unpredictable. You never know what you are going to get out of your garden (like tough peas), or what is going to get into your garden (like the squirrels who sampled EVERY ONE of my peppers last year)

This year it's the vines - the crazy vines -they are taking over. Between my cucumbers rapidly overgrowing the bounds of their box (in the foreground) to my neighbors pumpkins (the bright green in the background- tough to see in this photo unless you know they are there) which are rapidly making a dash west from their home near the driveway across my lawn towards the stolen peonies.

Even the driveway melons are threatening to make a break for it. Before too much longer Hubby won't have any lawn left to mow.

Now if all these vines would just start to bear some female blossoms we would be in business!

And those pesky squirrels? This year I planted something special just for them... They can try one, as long as they leave me enough to make some of these. And if not -there is always the farmers market.