Weed It And They Will Come

When the man was putting in the drain field for the septic system he said he would seed it with grass when it was done. I told him no. Do not seed it with grass. I want to see what will come up on its own.

Well a lot of stuff has come up over the years, including things I did not like. I got a huge thicket of elderberry and tons of the tall and floppy New England Aster. Too tall, too woody and too aggressive, they had to go. I have been weeding them out for several years now and continue to do so.

From the time I arrived I began removing the unwanted. In the beginning that would be called brush clearing. I took out a lot of sapling and smaller trees that were poorly spaced or poorly shaped. A couple of years ago I gave my wood burning neighbor well over a dozen full grown trees. They were mostly the ugly, half dead Black Locust.

More sunlight is getting in and the nature of the garden becoming began changing. I kept weeding out several of the other thugs, Blackberry, Clematis virginiana and Impatiens pallida. I keep weeding them out.

Perhaps they were there all along and I never knew it because the competition was so fierce and so smothering.

Perhaps conditions have changed enough that a healthy population of Trillium erectum can now thrive in the garden becoming. Every time I look I find more.

I knew there were plenty of trilliums here. I had no idea there were this many. This one may even be a new species I haven't seen before. It is hard to know for sure. The natural variability of species up here is rather pronounced. Pronounced enough to be down right annoying when trying to identify things.

There seem to be a lot more Jack in the Pulpits, Arisaema triphyllum, than in the past. They are definitely setting seed. So are the trilliums. I see the babies in my looking.

Talk about variability. There is a high likelihood that all these Jacks are one specie.

I have green ones.

And brown ones.

And black ones.

And they come in small, medium and large.

I weed out what I don't want. Plant or seed what I do want and let the rest fill in on its own. The nature of the garden becoming has taken a distinct turn towards the more interesting and towards much more diversity. I owe a big part of that to more sunlight and regular editing. Part of the goal is to bring the height down towards the four foot range at the peak of the summer Lush by removing the taller things.

That way when new shrubberies follow me home like this Brilliant Red Chokeberry, Aronia arbutifolia, they will be better able to grow above the Lush and stand out enough to signal that this may well indeed be a garden.