Last year, I noticed a couple of little seedlings with heart-shaped leaves. At first glance, I thought they were lilac because one is right next to the old lady’s lilac bush (supplemented with a couple of little stick lilacs I got for free), but when I looked closer, I knew they weren’t. I thought about pulling them because at our house, chances are pretty good that a volunteer is an invasive, but something kind of said, “Just leave them and see what they are.” I forgot all about them for the rest of the season because they’re in Sarah-Flah’s Giant No-Mow Flowerbed, and that’s a fucking jungle any time after June. This spring, I noticed they’d come back, and again, thought about pulling them, but instead, I submitted a few pictures to Flower Checker. With 99%-plus certainty, they said “Catalpa”, either speciosa or bignonioides. Considering there’s that big old speciosa down by the creek even if it’s too tall and the blooms too far up to see well, I’m going to go with speciosa. So, at long last (not counting my one remaining baby dogwood), I have a volunteer tree that isn’t either a trash tree or an invasive! I will have to move these ones because they’re in the flowerbed, but don’t yet know where they’ll go. Hopefully, they’ll survive the move.
When we moved to Parview, there were several random plants on the north side of the patio. Given the shit soil and the shade from the garage and the osage-orange trees, none of them was doing well at all. I recognized the leaves on a little string of a plant, but couldn’t place them. C happened to be here one day, and I asked her. She said they were clematis, so I gave the little string a sort of ghetto-looking trellis to climb, then once I had made the Bee Happy bed, I moved it over there. From a sad-looking string on the shady north side to the southwest corner of the house has done well for it!
I don’t have any floating plants yet (might just toss in a handful of duckweed and call it good), and when we stop getting rain, the jewelweed will croak, but for the time being, my pond looks…like it belongs. I’d moved some false Virginia Creeper over there to sort of half-cover the rocks so it wouldn’t look so much like I’d dug a hole in the ground, put in a black rubber liner and stuck rocks around it to hold the edges, and my plan succeeded. The creeper is kind of aggressive, but not too bad, and it looks really nice. I don’t mind the creeper, either, because if it gets enough sun, it’ll produce berries that birds will eat. I’ll just keep it from choking out my Allegheny Spurge, and Canadian Ginger, and that’ll be good enough. It looks so fresh and green.
