The spring rush is on.

We had a great opening weekend. Old friends came by and new people showed up as well. We had a few extra vendors from local farmers markets selling organic beef, lamb, goat cheese and so much more (I will be eating well for the next few weeks myself). We closed up shop for the day at four and all the vendors vowed to meet again for dinner in September, a fine time was had by all.

During the weekend, as my friend Anne and I were walking up to our house, we passed my old retail garden and she said 'I used to covet this garden'. She said it in a sad way as the garden is over run with all kinds of weeds and plants that have gone wild.  Another friend, Linda, had commented the day before how beautiful the garden had once been. I have neglected it the last few years, it will get a quick run through from George once a year but that isn't enough to keep weeds at bay. Some of the worst offenders are plants I put there, like the confederate violets, with their beautiful splotched blue and white flowers. I got a clump from good friends years ago and put them in the garden where I could take care of them. I was able to do that for, say, 5 years; I even thought I had gotten them all. But when we moved to the new retail area, the garden got lonely and neglected. Over the years I kept at the violets and I thought I was winning the war. Nope. The reason I thought I had gotten them all was because, unknown to me, they had sneaked over to the other side of the garden and were flourishing. Having come upon them a few days ago, I am enjoying digging them up as they are easy to spot (being one of the only green things in the garden--beautiful flowers even now). 

One of the things they were crowding out were my tree peony seedlings. Years ago I was given tree peonies that had been done from seed. Now eight years later I have a really nice crop of seedlings of various age groups below their mothers. Three years ago I dug about 30 of them up and tried to pot them up. It was too much care for me, being as they were not going to bloom for another four or five years and I couldn't keep them alive for one. So I decided to leave them in the ground. It's funny that I consider the violets invasive, while I encourage the peonies (of which there are many). I am thinking of turning the garden into a tree peony garden: now that would be impressive. I bet a confederate violet garden wouldn't take nearly as long to mature; they're very sneaky. Come and visit now that we are open; we'd love to see you...and we can help you with just these sorts of problems. 

Happy Digging,

Karen