A Mother’s Journal

It’s not been too long ago that I mentioned my mystery plant, and I was so happy when Vanillalotus figured out for me what it was.  I had been wondering for years.  I had come close to identifying it, but not quite. 

The plant is Cassia obtusifolia and this picture is to show you how tall it’s gotten.  I know it’s considered a pesty weed by some, but it’s one of my favorite plants that pops up everywhere in my garden from seed each year.  It ended up here by accident one year (from a bird?), and it’s been coming back ever since.  You can see the very top yellow bloom is nearly up to my shoulder. 

I thought Oreo might be interested in the pods on the plant — she loves playing in the garden, batting things around and torturing creatures (how sad), but she was hungry and trying to lead me around to her cat food bowl.

Call me crazy, but I love Cassia obtusifolia!  Isn’t it pretty?  And even though it is sometimes classified as a weed, it is easily pulled out of the ground and doesn’t spread with crazy roots or choke other things out.

Can you see the carpenter bee flying towards the yellow bloom?  Cool.

This might explain why the geranium died.

Just a quick walk through my garden each day makes me happy.  I love the layers and textures and colors.  I love how things happen by accident but look so beautiful.  (Life it like that, you know.)

Gardening also presents great challenges and makes a person think.

This Japanese knotweed looked so pretty in the container at the gardening center.  I had never heard of it before.  I bought a pot.  I’ve regretted it ever since.

Let’s talk about this gardening center I purchased the knotweed from.  It was a very nice place, considered very upscale, and many gardeners shopped there.  I could not afford much of anything there at one time, but they had beautiful plants and supposedly a lot of expertise, and I occasionally shopped for plants there.  One would think that the owners of the gardening center would have warned consumers that Japanese knotweed is extremely invasive, considered a noxious weed in many areas and will take over and kill out everything around it.  But no.  No warning of any kind.  That garden center has since closed down.  I bought other plants there that were mislabeled, and yet other plants that were also invasive without any warnings on the pots.

At a run-of-the-mill place with low prices, I consider it my job to know what I’m getting, but at a place that charges double or triple what other places charge and that carries exotic plants, I expect to be told what I’m getting.  But maybe I’m wrong about that…  After all, the plant is growing in my garden and I paid for it.

I’ve spent about 8 years trying to get all this knotweed out of the ground.  Oh, it’s just another lesson from the garden.  Sometimes in life we do some little stupid thing that we spend years paying for.   Years.  It sure is a good thing to look way into the distance (as far as we can logically think) to try and see where what we are about to do will take us.  We might not like where we end up. 

That’s my rant for the day. 

Now for the “Other Stuff”

This time of year is very busy for me.  Summer is wrapping up.  I have some chidren in public school and one homeschooling.  We’re buying all sorts of homeschool supplies and also buying what we need for public school.  It’s a time of putting up calendars and looking at the schedule, of buying new backpacks and school clothes, and of taking homeschool pictures for the scrapbook.

I am so glad I got my bulletin board done.  I am really, really loving it.  I think it is going to be the difference in my keeping up with things and forgetting about things this year. 

I have a lot of projects going on personally.  I am in the thinking stages of making a new mosaic birdbath.

All of this won’t work like this, but I am just thinking right now.

I also am tearing down old wall paper border upstairs.  All three boys are getting bedroom makeovers.  Pictures to come.

I am brightening up my work area with little pictures, scrapbooking — a lot, and organizing my paper supplies for other fun stuff I like to make.  It’ll also be time soon to decorate the front porch and garden for fall.

Hope you all have a wonderful Wednesday. 

Lynn